As It Should Be
by FireflyEmbers
Summary: Rose, her Doctor, the parallel world, a strange red box, TARDIS Jr, secrets, looming neural implosions, and a whole lot of timey-wimey wibbly-wobblyness. Will Rose save her Doctor at the cost of... well, everything? Rose/10.5.
1. Prologue

(( AN: Hello and welcome! I hope you're ready for a pinch of angst, a dash of romance, tons of adventure, and a copious amount of timey-wimey wibbly-wobblyness. This has been a complicated fanfic to create, so I hope you guys enjoy it.

This fanfic is currently completely written, so expect fairly steady updates, Sundays and Wednesdays! It's also technically a sequel to my previous Doctor Who fanfic, A Madwoman and her Box, but you don't need to have read that to enjoy this. Oh! And if you know Rose's secret from that fic, don't spoil it!

As always, please feel free to leave me feedback either in reviews or in PMs. Now... Allons-y! ))

**Prologue.**

_Two months in the future..._

**I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself. **

The woman was suspended in mid-air, her hair whipping about her and tendrils of white-gold twisting their way in a delicate halo. Where her eyes had been there was only the burning gold of twin suns, her hands hanging loose at her sides. And all around her was destruction, the light curling into whipping winds that vibrated the very walls of the TARDIS, the center console peeled back from the gaping hole as if a supernatural force had simply punched its way through the machine to the very center of it. It burned like a supernova, but even as it burned it was being drained, the light sucked out from it into the golden-eyed woman.

She raised her hands slowly and the fury of the maelstrom increased. The lights along the walls of the ship shattered with a crescendo of sharp popping sounds, the shards of glass propelled against metal and skin alike, heedless of the figures hunched against the far wall.

"Rose!" the dark-haired woman pushed forward against the wind, trying but unable to make any headway against the vengeful maelstrom. "Stop this! You're going to destroy everything, Rose! He wouldn't want that!"

**I will have him safe. I will have him alive once more.**

There, on the floor in front of her, was a rumpled form in a blue pinstripe suit, unmoving. The curls of light fell along his still form with all the tenderness of a lover's carress, protecting him from the debris-laden winds. The same winds that battered the dark-haired woman even as she stood, and the other woman hunched against the wall, arm flung over her head protectively.

"He's gone! You have to let him go!" the woman yelled, shoving her way to her feet, even as she pulled a slim silver cylinder from her belt and leveled it at the being that had once been Rose.

The golden-eyed goddess raised her hands further. The TARDIS groaned from the strain of containing her, the walls buckling with the force of her fury, her winds and her light. It was more than that - she was warping the very fabric of time, tearing it apart as casually as she'd ripped into the heart of the white-and-silver ship.

**I take Time into my hands. I take reality and I mold it. It will be as I will it. **

"Stop, Rose!" The woman's voice caught, breaking in anguish. "Please!"

The being that had once been Rose glanced over her shoulder, tears streaking down her cheeks. For a moment - for a precious second - the light dimmed and the woman thought that perhaps - perhaps she'd gotten through to her. But then a single tear slipped from her chin and fell, a meteor coursing through the air as it splattered into the palm of the man's hand - a cold, still hand.

The moment was gone and the cacophony that was the Bad Wolf howled in pain and fury and loss, pulling the heart of the TARDIS and pouring it into her own chest. She was going to destroy herself, and with it, everything in existence.

The raven-haired woman held the slim cylinder aloft for a moment more. One shot - all it would take would be one shot with the laser setting and it'd be over. The universe, all of reality, would be safe. But Rose... The pen wavered, then with a soft sigh, she lowered it. She couldn't. Not Rose, not after all they'd been through...

She dropped to her knees, turning to the red-headed woman clinging to the side of the TARDIS and pulling her into a protective embrace.

"What c'n we do?" the woman gasped.

The dark-haired woman pulled a leather band with a set of silver dials and knobs on it from her pocket, slapping it on her wrist. She started twisting dials rapidly, glancing over her shoulder before looking back at her companion.

"Right now?" Her sky blue eyes traveled back to the goddess floating mid-air, ripping apart space and time in her rage, her lover dead at her feet. She grabbed her companion's hand and wrapped it around the device on her wrist before replying, her voice tight. "Something crazy."

Then, with a flash of electricity, they were gone.


	2. Chapter 1

(( AN: Let the timey-wimey-ness commence!

Also, I'm still looking for someone to possibly beta read this before I publish it completely, mostly for continuity and the flow of the story. So if you'd be willing to give good, specific feedback on the rest of the story, please just drop me a PM and I'll send you the whole thing. :)

And as always, if you enjoy, please please review! ))

**** DW ** * ** DW ** * ** DW ****

**Chapter One.**

_Present..._

"Stop mucking about and _push the button!_" the blonde woman hollered, gripping the wheel of the rapidly careening truck desperately as crates and jars cascaded against the window shield, exploding in bursts of shards and spices.

"Don't rush me, it's a process!" bellowed the brown-haired man in response, his blue pinstripe jacket whipping wildly in the hot wind streaming past him. Behind them, crashing through the crowded streets and alleyways in pursuit, knocking over stalls and scattering people, was a large, six legged, purple camel. Well, not exactly a camel, for it had a mouth full of razor sharp teeth and pale pink slobber that sizzled with acidity as drops splattered against the dusty ground. Yet another alien that was where - and when - it shouldn't be. Specifically, this one was nearly two hundred years out of place... not that it seemed to care as it thundered after them, determined to grind their bones to make its bread - or something similarly nefarious.

"What process? There's one step! _Push the bloody button!"_

The man shot an offended glance over his shoulder, a sudden lurch in the truck's path thrusting him hard against the side of the truck bed, nearly causing him to drop the small box he held, complete with an antenna made of a twisted coat hanger and a big, round, red button in the middle.

"What d'you mean, only one step! There's at _least_ six steps in this venture! It's a very complicated plan - I should know, I came up with it!"

"_John!_ " Rose's voice hit a particular note as she jerked the truck to the side, nearly ramming into the rear end of a slow-moving truck parked half-in, half-out of the main thoroughfare. He was thrown to the other side of the truck bed, this time fumbling with the small silver box before finally securing it. With one quick glance towards the cabin to see if his blonde-haired compatriot had noticed the near-miss, he turned back towards the six-legged camel-monster, which had nearly caught up to them, splatters of acid scoring the back of the truck.

"All right, all right! One step, then, stop badgerin' me!"

_Wait,_ he told himself. _Wait, you have to wait for the perfect moment..._ He gritted his teeth as he watched the purple beast weave its way through the cluttered streets. A camel ladened down with two large jars of olive oil stepped in front of it abruptly, and the alien launched itself skyward, all legs akimbo and acid-slobber. _That's it!_

"Allons-y!"

He jammed his thumb down on the button, and the world went blinding white.

**** DW ** * ** DW ** * ** DW ****

_Three months ago..._

They stood there, on the smooth grey sweep of the sandy beach, the wind whipping around them, the barest depression in the sand where the blue box had sat, and Rose wondered what the hell she was going to do now.

Only a few hours later, they were seated in the velvet-cushioned comfort of her father's airship, him sitting across from her, and she wondered once again what in the great, wide, cosmos she was going to do. With him. With herself. With any of it.

She hadn't planned on coming back. Especially not with him. Or not-him. Or whatever he was.

He was never meant to know what she'd gone through, what this world had asked of her and what she'd willingly sacrificed for him. She was going to forget her life here, put it behind her. She'd made promises - she made other people give her promises. She'd given her things away, quit her job, said her good-byes. She'd even sold her flat. Oh god, her flat... her clothes! Her _toothbrush._

Where was she going to sleep?

Scratch that. Where was _he_ going to sleep?

Her eyes traveled back to him, unbidden. Even now he was sitting - lounging, really - looking out the blimp windows at the world unfolding beneath him, the little curl of a piece of TARDIS coral cupped in his hand and resting against his chest. She wondered what he was feeling now. Probably as lost as she herself had felt when she'd been left on that very same beach, oh so long ago now...

Gripped by a sudden desperation, she grabbed her phone - her beloved and battered superphone - and jammed her thumb through the messages.

Nothing. Well, of course, she thought irritatedly. No one knew yet how terribly wrong it'd all gone... Punching the keys, a second later she'd sent a text message winging through the cosmos.

_call me. need 2 talk. ASAP!_

"Blimey..."

She jumped at the sound of his voice and the lance of sheer terrified joy that wiggled through her at its familiar roughness. He was looking at her, those dark eyes studying her as intently as he had the very first day he'd met her. Sizing her up. Discerning what he could. But there was a gentleness to his mouth that hadn't been there, a tenderness to the wry smile at the corner of mouth.

"W-wha?" she stammered, flipping her phone shut and shoving it deep into her pocket. She wasn't ready to talk about that with him yet. She wasn't ready to possibly lose him forever because of the secret she was keeping.

"You've been here... what, three years? And you're still hanging on to that ratty old thing? I could make you a better one, if y' want..."

"No," Rose said, a bit too suddenly, and his eyebrows arched. "No..." she tried again, her voice sounding tinny in her ears. "I mean, I've got all my contacts in this one. It's OK. Sides, can't find these types here anymore. Everyone uses the ear buds an' all... Can't get m'self to trust 'em, personally."

His grin said he'd recognized her effort and appreciated it. A moment later, it'd faded a tad, and there it was again. That gaping chasm between them both. He'd told her exactly what she'd wanted to hear, and she'd kissed him and didn't regret it for an instant... but that left them right back at the beginning of the conundrum. Who was he? Was he her Doctor? Was he someone else?

Worst of all, did he even know who _she_ was anymore?

She turned her gaze out the window again in a vain attempt to find some answers scrawled on the clouds. Three years, he'd said. He didn't know how wrong he was.

**** DW ** * ** DW ** * ** DW ****

_Present... _

When the light finally returned to normal, it revealed the truck half-lifted, ground on a pile of groaning wooden boxes, John sprawled across the boxes and netting in the back. All around them were soft purple specks, drifting softly down from the sky to alight on both ground and debris, speckling the myriad round-eyed, astonished faces peeking out from the safety of doorways and windows to stare, unabashed, at the two of them and their crashed truck.

John groaned as he weakly tried to disentangle himself from the battered remains of the truck's previous cargo, squinting skyward. There, rapidly fading from view, was the faintest of ripples in the air, about fifteen feet up. It was the remains of a transmat, an impromptu one, but effective enough.

And half a world away, a previously empty cell was going to be _much_ more interesting. He only hoped that Torchwood's containment units were acid-proof.

Well, if not, Jake and the rest of the Wolf Pack were going to have a _fun_ time.

"Rose?" he finally managed to groan out her name, rolling onto his side to peer through the cabin window, where a tangled mess of blonde hair greeted his gaze. There was no immediate answer, only the slight shifting of the hair he could see. "Rose?" he questioned again, a sudden squeeze of fear clenching at his throat. She was making muffled sounds, but he couldn't tell quite what they were.

He scrabbled for purchase, clawing his way through the remains of the truck's cargo towards the portal of the window and the woman he loved who lay beyond. "Rose!"

Then the sounds she was making bubbled into something recognizable, something that immediately eased the cold clawing at his insides - Rose was laughing. Her head was thrown back, her dark eyes dancing with it, even as she lay half-slouched under the dash of the truck. She was completely and totally askance, and completely and totally gorgeous.

John sank further down in relief, savoring the sound as it danced through the air and resonated off of the walls.

"That -" Rose began, breathless with her mirth, her eyes shining. "That was insane-! You jus' made a transmat from some spare parts in a hookah bar. To deal with a shape-shifting acid-spitting camel-alien...! Oh, that was brilliant..."

John folded a hand on the sill of the window, resting his chin on it and gazing at her. He didn't say anything, just basked in the glow of her. It'd been so long, so very, very long. He'd been here - been alive - for going on three months, now, and it was the first time he'd heard her laugh. Honestly laugh, not the empty polite laugh that didn't reach her eyes.

She'd smiled, since he came back. Especially when she'd shown him this universe's Torchwood, and just how utterly different it was from everything the other Torchwood had been, everything he'd expected. She'd smiled when he met Tony, the three year old babbling a million miles an hour as he gripped the then-new metacrises's fingers in his chubby hands. She'd even smiled at him - strained, unsure, but she had.

None of them had lit her beautiful, dark-lashed eyes the way that her laughter right now was.

Finally her gaze met his, locked and held, for one long, breathless moment. There was the sparkle, the flutter at the base of his stomach that he recognized from every time she'd hugged him, every time she'd grabbed his hand as they'd dashed off on their different adventures.

Only... that hadn't been his hand.

As if the thought had occurred to her, too, Rose's smile faded, and John's stomach sank as she turned her face from him. Here she was, so close, everything he'd ever wanted... yet she was still so far away. She fumbled with the seatbelt - when had she had time to put a _seatbelt_ on? John mused - but it was stuck. Muttering under her breath, she struggled with it for a moment before John shoved his top half through the window.

"Here, let me," he said softly, and withdrew a small silver cylinder from his pocket. With the push of a button and a quick hum, the belt snapped apart, freeing Rose. Raising his gaze, he found his face inches from her own. She was staring at him with those big, dark eyes of hers, deep and unreadable. "There you go... No problem."

"Thanks," she said, her voice quiet and husky. Her long lashes brushed her cheeks as she dipped her gaze down, suddenly shy. His Rose, shy... The thought made him smile, and before he'd realized it, he'd reached out, hand cupping her cheek. Damnable human impulses, he thought, even as the tip of his thumb skimmed along her skin in a feather-light caress.

Her eyes flitted back to him, dark and inviting, sending a quiver down his spine. He leaned forward, eyes locked on hers, uncaring that he was leaning through the broken back window of a stolen truck, crashed against some crates of what seemed to be pineapples, from the smell drifting up from them, after they'd chased an alien through the busy streets of Cairo. All that mattered was Rose and her soft lips glistening in the sunlight from outside as he leaned forward and she let him -

- only to be interrupted by the clump of large, metal footsteps behind them and the staccato of frightened voices punctuating the air.

The sound closed Rose off to him again, he could see it. It was like the hissing thump of those footsteps slammed that small opening to her heart shut and locked. With a sigh, he sank out of the window, turning to find three tall, metal humanoids standing there, all facing him with their impassive metal faces. They weren't waiting for him, he knew _that_. They barely tolerated him.

The feeling was mutual.

He didn't say anything as Rose slid from the truck and moved towards the Cybermen. Cyber-protectors, he mentally corrected himself. Slowly, he slid from the bed of the truck, righting his clothing and tucking the sonic screwdriver back into the breast pocket against his heart where it belonged. Jamming his hands into his pockets, he watched quietly as Rose took stock of the CPs and any damage they'd sustained during their skirmish with the alien-camel-beast.

How they'd come to be, how anyone had thought to ask the refuse, the remains of the Cyberman invasion if they wanted to come to work with Torchwood, if they wanted to swear fealty to this slip of a pink-and-gold girl... no one was saying. It was just one more tick in a list of things that didn't add up, things that all built up together into one inescapable truth: Rose was hiding something from him. Something big.

Rose was chattering about charging up the CP's teleportation circuits, his name thrown in a couple of times, but he wasn't paying attention. He could feel the heat building up between his ears, easily dismissed right now. It was only a matter of time, however. Only a matter of time before the human half of the Human-Timelord-Metacrises gave in, before his intellect was no longer supportable.

Only a matter of time before he burned.


	3. Chapter 2

(( AN: Here we go, another chapter, another adventure, another step closer to Bad Wolf apocalypse! As always, let me know what you guys think, either via PMs or through that handy little review box. Enjoy! :) ))

**Chapter Two. **

_Two and a half months ago..._

Torchwood One stood in the heart of London, tall and gleaming and gorgeous. The Torchwood flag hung out front, just underneath the Union Jack, a golden cross of cellular hexagons on a field of white. Not the black and red of the one in his dimension, but this wasn't a Torchwood he was going to recognize at all.

She was still nervous, though. She didn't exactly know why. He hadn't said anything in reference to her working for Torchwood since coming, even though she knew his feelings about the place. God knew she'd been torn up enough herself when first coming to this dimension, considering it was Torchwood who'd landed her there in the first place. Still, it'd served its purpose for her, and perhaps that was why he'd yet to say anything against it.

Somehow, she doubted that was all there was to it.

As the car pulled up in front of the building and rolled to a stop, Rose reached out and put her hand over the Doctor's. The Metacrisis's. God, she didn't even know what to refer to him in her head...

He stopped in the middle of rising to get out of the car, turning his eyes to hers, silently questioning.

She took a slow, steadying breath. She'd prepared everyone else for his arrival. Rehearsed the stories with them, told them what they were and were not allowed to say. She'd argued with her father, had a good old brawl about whether or not she should even still be at Torchwood.

'Look,' she'd told him. 'There's always goin' t' be aliens. You need me here - the Wolf Pack needs me here. And we need him. Besides... what else are either of us gonna do? We ain't exactly good matches for the workplace 'ny more.'

So her father had relented, she'd kept her position at Torchwood, and now HE was coming, too.

"Jus'..." she began, her tongue darting out to wet her lips nervously. "Jus' keep an open mind, okay? Don'... freak out at anything. It's a safe place, I promise. So... promise me. Open mind, yeah?"

His brow furrowed, ever so slightly, but still he'd nodded. "O'course."

She led him into Torchwood.

The lobby was normal enough. Big, open area, glass front panels, line of polite receptionists behind their neatly tended desk. Several of them raised their hands to wave at Rose. They'd all heard she'd resigned... and then, less than a week later, come back. Come back to stay, even. No doubt the grape vine was a buzzing with tales of her mental insecurity, especially given the events of the past month. They'd just finished rebuilding the destroyed floors of the Tower when she'd showed back up again, with a fully working prototype of the dimensional cannon and years of research and data that couldn't have possibly existed.

She walked past the desk without voicing any of these thoughts. He couldn't know about that. Nervously, she pulled her phone out of her pocket, thumbing through the main menu. No new messages.

_where r u? call me!_

She hit send, shoved the phone back in her pocket, then looked over her shoulder to find him watching her, head canted to the side curiously.

"Ready?" she asked, raising her hands to the double doors - simple, metal, no windows - that led into the heart of Torchwood. There was no sound from beyond, no indication about what he was about to experience.

"Rose, I've all the memories of a 900-year old Time Lord, there's nothing you can show me that can shock-"

She swung the doors open and stepped back.

The room beyond was huge - the entire lower floor had been converted into a plaza of sorts, with a central square of counters in the middle and queues leading up to each of the four sides which were all labeled with different signs. It reached up several floors, with balconies leading to doors and offices framing the central room. All normal... except for all the beings thronging to and fro in various states of business.

A tall green being with fearsome claws - a Slytheen - stood, arms in shackles that crackled with pale blue energy, with an armed contingent of guards on either side of it. There was a rapid chattering noise from a squat, multi-tentacled creature with a face like a bird and no legs as it slid past them, a few stray feathers curling from its rapidly waving tentacles. All around, humans with the gold-and-white Torchwood badges moved things along, even as what looked like a miniature pterodactyl winged through the open air above to perch on a railing on the third floor.

A woman in formal garb stood talking to what looked like a being of pure gas, its form rippling and indistinct. Meanwhile, a reptilian Silurian in a white lab coat wearing a Torchwood badge strode towards the elevators with several other scientists. Silver Cybermen marched in formation past, each slapping their fist to their chest in salute as they passed Rose, heedless of the way the man in the pinstripe suit grabbed her arm protectively. Rose shot him a quelling look.

Threading through the crowd, a large gun slung across his back, Jake waved furiously, grinning widely as he drew even with them.

"Oi, Rose! Ready to get back in action? We've reported sightings of something distinctly non-terrestrial in Peru. The good ol' Wolf Pack ain't the same without ya."

Rose grinned at his enthusiasm, then cleared her throat, jerking her head at the tall man standing behind her, his mouth agape as he stared around them. "First time here," she explained. Jake took a long moment to look up and down him, his jaw slack.

"Doctor... Never imagined seein' _you_ here!"

"I'm not," the Metacrisis said roughly, his eyes flicking to Jake. The young man glanced at Rose questioningly before the other continued in a soft voice. "I'm not the Doctor." His eyes locked on Rose; this was at the heart of the great chasm between them. She held his gaze for only a second, then dropped it away.

Jake glanced between them, then reached up and clapped Rose's shoulder. "Right then, I'm off. Gotta planet to protect. I'm taking CP-6 and CP-16 with us."

"What's wrong with 18?" Rose asked, sudden concern furrowing her brow. "They're always together..."

"Nn. Nasty encounter with a Turellian bog beast fried some of her peripheral circuitry. She'll be all right, just needs some time regrowing the bio-circuits. She's up in the Biomechanics Ward, if you wanna drop in. I'm sure she'll be glad to see you... and I'm right glad you're back to take 'em off my hands. Bloody crazies."

With that, and an off-handed smile, Jake took his leave of them. Rose took a slow breath and turned to look at her companion.

He was staring at her as if he couldn't quite decide what to make of her. His eyes left her to flick around, taking in the aliens, the technology, the humans, everything... then returned to stare at her steadily, even as he rocked back on his feet, his hands still shoved deep in his pockets. "... I can understand everything they're saying," was his first comment.

Rose nodded. "Localized low-level telepathic translation field."

"Ah." He looked around again. "There's... so many."

She shrugged one shoulder. "A lot of them were living in hiding, already here. We just developed the means of finding them all and identifying them. The ones that don't mean any harm are permitted to remain, as long as they don't endanger any humans and don't assume any position of power either political or monetary. The ones that cause problems... Well, we have a dozen teams spread over five different locations here and around the world trained to deal with them. And those aliens that wanna work with us... Well, Torchwood has a buncha different branches for research and development with five different locations 'round the world."

She looked back at him and grinned. "Not too shabby, yeah?"

"Not too shabby?" he repeated, his eyebrows swinging skyward. His grin lit up his face. "It's _brilliant_, is what it is. Absolutely fantastic!" Reaching out, he took her hand in his own, giving it the lightest of squeezes. "You lot. You're amazin'."

And with that, Rose breathed a sigh of relief, and something in her deflated. He watched her settle down, into her skin again, taking the shape of the Rose he knew, easing away from the hard-shouldered, nervous woman she'd been only a few minutes ago.

"C'mon," she said. "Lemme show you around."

It was accompanied by a brilliant smile, and, well... how could he say no, with her looking so beautiful in her excitement? It was all right. He'd let her show him around and praise what he saw and not say what was really on his mind: that it was all impossible. For three years, from what they'd been... utterly impossible.

**** DW ** * ** DW ** * ** DW ****

_Two weeks later..._

"John? _John_."

His eyes snapped open, focusing on the dark-lashed eyes leaning over him, worry creasing the skin between them. The familiar walls of his study framed his view of Rose, lined with the cabinets and bookshelves he'd already filled, despite only having been here for months. He groaned, rubbing his hands over his face and through his hair to hide his own confusion. He'd just come back from lunch and been working on ... on something. The temporal anomalies. He'd been analyzing the reports of temporal flux anomalies. Here, at his desk.

Then, the burning, and he'd lost track of time. His eyes flicked to the clock - five o'clock in the evening. He'd lost the entire afternoon.

Rose lowered herself onto the corner of the desk, gaze still locked on him. Vortex love her, she was gorgeous, even with her brow wrinkled in worry.

"Sorry, did I drop off? Late nights recently an' all..."

"Are you still not sleeping well?" Rose asked in a soft voice. He swallowed hard around the lie in his throat, forcing it out.

"It's funny. Got nine hundred years worth of memories of hardly ever sleepin', so apparently it's a habit tha's hard t' break." He offered a lopsided smile, then nodded his head at the paper clutched in her hands. "What'd you bring me? Hopefully somethin' more interestin' than this lot o' rubbish." One gesture encompassed the piles of books and papers on his desk. This was one thing he was still having so much trouble getting used to - _paperwork_.

Rose offered a small smile. "You're not goin' t' like it. I ... I thought you might like it, so... I went looking for Donna. Donna Noble. This world's Donna Noble. Wondered where she might be, an' I know you miss 'er..."

His smile disappeared, an intense look on his face as he straightened up in his chair. "Yeah?"

"She's ... Well, she's gone." Rose handed the paper over to him.

"Gone, what'd'you mean gone? Most important woman in the universe, she can't just be _gone_-"

"It was the Christmas Star incident," Rose said softly. John's head snapped up to focus on her. "It happened a year ago, here, at Christmas time. There was a space ship - like a star. Everyone thought it was somethin' wonderful, amazin'. It opened fire and Torchwood had to respond_._" Rose's eyes dropped to the desk as if remembering that time. He waited, and a moment later she cleared her throat and looked up at him again. "I guess Donna was supposed to get married that night, but... in the chaos, she an' her fiance disappeared."

John stared at her for a long moment. The Christmas Star... He remembered that phrase. "What happened to the Empress?"

Rose stared at him. "Wha' Empress?"

"The Empress of the Racnoss. It was her ship. Wha'd you do with her?"

Rose just shook her head. "I don't know what you're talkin' about. There was no Empress, no .. Racnoss. There was only the ship, firin' on the city. We - the Wolf Pack - got on board, but there was no one there. It was bein' remotely controlled, an' about ten minutes after we boarded, it started a self destruct sequence."

"It blew itself up? But... tha' doesn't make sense... I need to find out something." John was gripped with a sudden worry. What had happened to the Empress, then? And Donna? If events had happened here like they had happened in his world... Was she dead now? He had to find out, perhaps by visiting the base that he knew _had_ to be under the river. He shoved himself forward onto his feet. Despite his attempt to hide it, he wobbled, then almost immediately sat right back down, legs askance.

"John!" Rose was at his side in an instant, hands on his shoulders, which he didn't have time to dwell on because it was happening again. The searing heat at the back of his eyes devoured everything, spreading through him until he was simply a mass of white-hot agony, down to every last nerve in the very tips of his fingers and toes. He could hear Rose's voice, sharp with fear, but from such a great distance that it hardly seemed to matter anymore.

Part of him was screaming, but not for the pain, for Rose. He was trying to hide it - he'd managed to hide it - for so long. But now it wasn't coming on gradually, he couldn't make his excuses and hide himself where she wouldn't be able to find him. She was smart, she wasn't going to let him convince her that this wasn't something important. He was going to have to tell her, going to have to watch her as she realized that, once again, he was leaving her behind. Once again, they were being ripped apart. And this time, when they were supposed to have _forever_.

There, in his study, in his love's arms, he burned.

**** DW ** * ** DW ** * ** DW ****

_Two and half months ago..._

Rose shoved the doors to the Biomechanics Ward open and hurried inside, the human Doctor following behind her with his hands still shoved in his pockets. He'd asked a few questions here and there as they made their way through the hubbub of the central court and into the quieter halls beyond, but for the most part, he seemed content to look and observe and follow Rose.

She, for her part, had wasted no time with offices or labs or any of the boring stuff. He'd be most interested in this, after all.

Pushing the plastic flaps out of the way, she stepped into the room. It was large, but made smaller by the fact it was separated by long, still white curtains into smaller sub-rooms, most open to the central walkway. The hum of electricity buzzed against his ears, along with the soft whisper of crackling circuits and the hiss of gases through tubing. It was at once a hospital and a tech lab, bags of fluids hung from trees right next to wrenches and welding guns.

Biomechanics, indeed, he thought as he followed the golden-haired Rose deeper into the Ward. She seemed to know where she was going, because they passed through another set of hanging plastic strips into a smaller version of the room they'd just been in.

This room, however, made his blood turn to shards of ice in his veins.

One wall had a collect of various pieces of Cyberman armor, from heads and gloves to nearly complete sets. Almost directly across from it was a row of tanks filled with pale blue liquid... and growing in them, what he knew instantly was nerve material. Free neurons, easily integrated into circuitry. Everything the Cybermen needed to heal themselves.

He paused in the very entrance of the room - not the place to be, it seemed, for someone jostled him. He shot a glance over his shoulder just in time to see dark eyes, blonde hair, turned away from him. "Sorry," the woman said and hurried off, leaving him with the most peculiar sensation.

He'd heard it called _deja vu_ before, but he also knew there was no such thing.

Before his mind could tick further along that line, he heard Rose's voice, high pitched, chattering excitedly. Like conversing with an old friend, one of her mates.

"Rose-" he began, but she was already across the room, and... leaning over a Cyberman that was resting in a metal support against the wall, various wires and diagnostic tools attached to it. Its right arm was mangled and damaged, the protective metal plates along it removed and sitting to one side, revealing the strange interplay of living nerves and cold hard circuitry underneath.

Rose looked over to him, opening her mouth as if to call to him - he could see it born and die on her lips, that word, the name of the one she _actually_ wanted - but instead simply gestured. "C'mere. Come meet 18."

The Cyberman's head rotated, empty metal eyes facing his direction. It took everything he had not to tear Rose away from it, create a sonic wave resonator with the materials he'd seen on the way in and -

Born in the heat and fury of battle, indeed.

He stilled his heart - the same amount of effort as before, only double the fury burning in it - and moved to Rose's side, the Cyberman's face following him.

"It - is - the Doc-tor."

Rose glanced at him and smiled, and he forced himself not to see the sadness in it. "Not.. exactly. It's hard t' explain. But he's goin' to be stayin' here, in this dimension. So maybe he can help repair the damage to you, yeah?"

His eyes went to her, swallowing hard the immediate protest that sprang to his lips, unbidden. Surely she realized who this was, what she was asking of him? They'd cost her her _mother_, parallel or not, nevermind threatened Rose herself, a sin he was far less willing to forgive than anyone realized. Fortunately, she didn't notice. She was asking about the bog beast - about Jake - the Wolf Pack - and he realized she _was_ chattering with an old mate. And the way the Cyberman was replying to her... It was human. Excitement here, in its slightly-less-than-monotone voice. An exclamation here. And as he listened, it all clicked into place.

This wasn't a true Cyberman. It was displaying - using - emotion, so its emotional inhibitor chip had been disabled.

"You're all right with being a Cyberman," he realized, his voice crashing like rocks into their middle of their conversation. Both of them cut off, looking over at him. There was nothing to read on 18's face, but on Rose's there was an entire story. Fear, pride, anticipation, hope... She'd always been an open book to him. Now she was giving him a novel.

"A-firm-a-tive," 18 stated. "In this bod-y I am com-plete."

"But... you're a human, well, meaning, you _were_ a human. Now you're just a shell - a husk. You can't feel, can't experience cold or rain or the warmth of the sun on your skin. The emotional cascade... it should've destroyed you all."

"Less than one hundredth of one percent," Rose said, her voice warm as she looked to 18. "That's how many the cascade didn' disable. An' they came here, t' Torchwood. They all remember their names, bu' they prefer their designations, now." She turned her beautiful dark eyes back to him, her gaze fathomless. Oh, how she'd matured from the child he'd opened the door of the TARDIS to. "They're Cyberprotectors." She looked back at 18. "They're friends."

18's mouth glowed in it - her - response. "A-firm-a-tive, Cybercontroller."

Rose's laughter interrupted his questions. "Rubbish! Tha's Jake now."

"Ne-ga-tive. He is an inferior Cybercontroller. He is inferior to Rosetyler."

Rose held a finger up. "Hush up. Don' let him hear you say that. He'll get tetchy."

"Un-ac-cept-a-ble. I will report him to the Pro-fes-sor."

And he was still reeling over _Cybercontroller - his Rose_ - and never mind the references to Jake that stung him with jealousy and the barrage of questions that surrounded _everything_ in this impossible building with its technology that shouldn't exist and its advancements that were so far ahead of their time it screamed _alien_. Even in his whirlwind state, his mind overheating with the billion and one _how_s and _what if_s screaming between his ears, he didn't miss the look that Rose shot him, the way her shoulders stiffened.

The awkward way she chuckled, patting the Cyberman - Cyberprotector's - chest. "Yeah, well, we'll see 'bout that. I'll be back tomorrow t' see how the new biocircuitry is takin, yeah? You just rest and plug in, get up t'date on everythin'."

Then she turned to him and said something about showing him to his office, and he was making a witty retort, but it wasn't mattering. Because he knew now what it was that his Rose was hiding from him - not a _what_ but a _who_. An impossible _who_ that everyone else knew but had yet to mention to him.

As he followed his Rose through the halls, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, he wondered if perhaps he hadn't lost the battle for her the moment they'd stepped foot back into this dimension.


	4. Chapter 3

(( AN: Sorry about the skipped Wednesday update, was on vacation with the family. Big, BIG thank you to my beta reader, lastincurableromantic ! She's fantastic. :)

This one's a bit of a shorty, but we're building up to a big reveal next chapter that I think you'll all enjoy. Once again, please don't forget to let me know what you think, either through PMs or that handy dandy review box. Thanks, and enjoy! :D ))

**Chapter Three. **

_Two and a half months ago..._

He thought about that kiss every night. Laying there, waiting for the human half of him to decide it was time to sleep, willing the Time Lord part of him to let it happen, his mind always spun back to that beach, the wind in her hair, the warmth of her lips. The feel of her in his arms. It was the purest form of torment, feeling that ache, that emptiness where she fit so perfectly, and knowing that she was only a half a dozen rooms away.

It'd been hard for the other him, he remembered that much. Especially there towards the end, after Krop Tor, that impossible planet. He'd been so close to losing her, yet again, and listening to the Beast spout his prediction... He'd squeeze his eyes shut and relieve those anxious nights, sitting in the TARDIS control room or prowling the corridors while she slept, desperate for some distraction from the fears and the thoughts that plagued him. She was so human, so fragile, and he was so scared.

In the end, no matter how hard he'd tried, the Doctor had lost her.

But not him, not the Human-Time Lord construct, born of Donna's desperation and the fires of battle, the heat of knowing she was in danger and the certainty he'd do anything to ensure her safety. He had her, so close... but he could lose her, too. He knew it. He could see how uncertain she was. Sometimes, like in the lab earlier today, it'd be exactly like it was supposed to be, seeing nothing but that gentle shining in her eyes that told him her heart was beating in time with his.

And then, a second later it'd be like the doors would close. She'd turn her face away and once again, she was beyond his reach.

It'd only been made worse by the discovery that the TARDIS coral chunk entrusted to him by the Doctor - the _real_ Doctor - was gone. They'd turned Torchwood upside down looking for it. He'd even created a scanner to find it, wherever it was, but... it was gone. Just gone. His anger and desolation at that discovery had driven the wedge between them even deeper, because Rose felt responsible. Personally responsible. She knew how much having that piece to grow his own TARDIS had meant to him.

He knew there many things at play here, but there were three things that he knew were beyond a shadow of a doubt standing in the way. The first was the fact that he wasn't the Doctor and neither of them knew what that meant. The second was Rose's secret, her mysterious Professor that surrounded them every day at Torchwood yet was never mentioned in more than passing or whispers. And the third, the one that would ultimately ruin everything, was his own secret.

He heaved a sigh and rolled onto his side. He couldn't do anything until Rose was ready to trust him with her secret. And he couldn't tell her his, about the burning headaches, the crippling waves of heat and the times he got 'stuck' on one phrase or fact. But he could do something about not being the Doctor.

She didn't know what to call him, in large part because he'd made it clear that he wasn't 'the Doctor', and that meant he had no name. He couldn't use the Doctor's, because he wasn't him. He wasn't a full Time Lord, he was only half. And that other half... it needed a name.

It was simple, really. He'd already used a name countless times. John. Simple enough, and he'd spent enough time being a _John_ that he'd grow into it. As for the second part? Well that was simple enough, too. He'd been born half Donna, so it was only right he'd be a Noble.

John Noble.

It was settled, he had a name. He squeezed his eyes shut, thinking about breakfast the next morning. He'd tell her then. He'd do what the other part of him could never do and tell her his name. He only hoped she'd realize what it meant, how much it meant. Humans used their names willy-nilly, but Time Lords... only sparingly, and true names only to the most important people in their incredibly long lives. It would mean so much to him to give his to her first.

Then, maybe... Maybe he'd bridge that gap between them, at least a little.

**** DW ** * ** DW ** * ** DW ****

_Two weeks later...  
_

Someone was standing over him, saying something. He could barely hear it through the blood rushing in his ears, the fierce pain of the information pounding against the inside of his skull, searing every fraying neuron. It was only with effort that he managed to slit his eyes open slightly, taking in a series of bright lights and a white ceiling framing a head. Well, a head that was connected to a body, he was sure, but he could barely focus on the face, never mind the rest of it.

"John, I need you to wake up for a moment," she was saying. Rose. His Rose.

He made more of an effort, focusing on her face. It was then that he offered a half smile, reaching one hand up towards her. "Lookit that. I'm having a fever-induced hallucination." It was Rose, his Rose, but not at all the way she was supposed to be. Her features were odd, warped, he was sure, by the misfiring of his neural network, and probably not helped by the fact his entire brain was currently being compromised.

She touched the back of his hand but nothing more. Her face was very serious. Well, at least his brain knew she'd be worried and serious when he finally woke up. "John, why aren't you telling me how to fix the Metacrisis neural overload?"

That cemented it. Definitely a dream - his Rose didn't know that. Couldn't know that, because he hadn't told _anyone_ he knew how to fix it.

"Oh, dream Rose... You know I can't," he replied, hand wavering towards the hallucination's cheek without actually making contact. He imagined she was frowning at him in displeasure, and felt a strange flush of happiness at it. Of course she'd be upset. That was his Rose, even in his dreams, everything about her was just so.. so _her_.

"Why not?" she pressed. "You're going to leave me again, my Doctor. Why won't you tell me? You know how much I've already given to be with you..."

He offered a soft laugh, his hand moving through the air. Finally, he found the hallucination's cheek, letting his fingers run along. Even her skin felt off, not-right, not-real - like it was rubber under his fingertips, not soft and smooth and warm like he knew it was. "You know I can't. It'll kill you, Rose. And I won't do that. I'd die first - so really, it's not even a question."

The fever-Rose leaned over him, her face more in view. Her features were blurred, deep lines in her skin like his brain thought she was a hundred years old. His silly brain. Was this his subconscious reminding him of her frailty? Or was this his wish, that he could live to see her this old? He couldn't remember his own name right now, never mind analyze his psyche. Oh well, maybe later. Maybe another fever dream to cover that too, since this once was covering his guilt at not telling Rose well enough.

"But I _love_ you," she said, plaintively.

"I love you more than life itself," he said, in a tone that even in his state could not be argued with. "And that's why I'll never tell you."

She smiled, a sad, ancient smile. "Oh, my Doctor..." A silver glint caught his eye as she laid something on his chest. He wondered what his beleaguered mind had come up with now. He just caressed her cheek, the sweat from his burning making even his fingertips slick. She was leaning forward now, her voice a ghost of a breath against his ear.

"I love you more than time itself."

With that, he let out a soft sigh, closing his eyes and letting his hand drop away from his imagined Rose's imagined cheek. There was nothing to say to that and he knew it. And if he couldn't even win an argument with a figment of Rose, what chance did he have with the real one?

There was only one solution. He could never tell her. He could never reveal to Rose that he knew how to save himself, to fix what was going on. It wasn't worth it if it would endanger her, because imaginary-Rose was right - she'd do it, for him. He could remember her, in the back of his eyelids, he could still see her, so young, having traveled with him for so little time, the way her dark eyes held his steadily.

_'Do it.'_

_'You don't even know what it is. You'd just let me?'_

The way she nodded, not even thinking about it, no hesitation. _'Yeah._'

No hesitation then, and she hadn't even loved him yet. Been interested, perhaps, but not love. Not then, and now... Now she'd spent years trying to get back to him. Breaking down the very walls between dimensions just to find him. She wasn't going to back down now, not even in the face of a dozen missiles... or the chance of death.

He could feel the heat climbing between his ears again, though this time there was a tickle at the front of his brain. He fought to open his eyes, but all he managed was the slightest of slants through which he saw a stream of incandescent gold, curling in front of his face, then... nothing.

No Rose, no gold, nothing. He let out another sigh and closed his eyes, surrendering to the fire and the pain, clutching tight to him the knowledge that even if he was going to die, there was no way he would endanger his Rose.


	5. Chapter 4

(( AN: Have it a day early as penance for missing another Wednesday update... Man, I really should learn about setting myself deadlines, I can never maintain them, even when the fanfic is already complete, haha...

Another shout-out to my AWESOME Beta'r, lastincurableromantic. She's the epitome of SPIFFY.

As a side-note, and as a direct result of having someone else telling me when things are too complicated, I have changed the dating system for the fic. We now have a set 'present' that we started out on and everything else will be dated according to that. So if you peruse back through the previous few chapters, you'll see that in affect.

As always, please leave me a review. :) More reviews = faster updates! (... theoretically. haha!) Enjoy! ))

**** DW ** * ** DW ** * ** DW ****

**Chapter Four.**

_One and a half months later..._

**"Auto -destruct triggered. Activation in ten minutes zero seconds. "**

Rose's head snapped around, dark eyes, brilliant in their concern, locking on him. "What did you do?"

He raised his gaze only a fraction, just enough to furrow his brow in a display he hoped adequately conveyed just how offended he was at that statement. "Oi! I haven't done anything, earth girl! I'm tracking the origination of the control signal, remember? Anyway why's it always my fault? We wouldn't be in this mess if you had decided to follow that Flesh version of me into the middle of a massive steel plated room with locks on the INSIDE of the doors."

Rose flushed deeply, hands tightening on the control panel even as the countdown blared overhead. They'd come to the Factory in response to a distress signal, unaware that it was all a trap devised by the now-independent Flesh Master Consciousness to gain it more bodies to copy. She and the others had gotten separated early on and when she'd heard his voice calling, she'd run to him, unaware of the voice's true owner - a Flesh copy.

A copy that had then suffered a complete meltdown. She glanced over her shoulder at the lump of white that had once just looked exactly like her John.

"Err. It's not gonna be gettin' itself back together any time soon, is it? "

John didn't even spare it half a second's glance, his fingers flying across the keys of the control panel. "Nope," he replied, popping the 'p ' sound in his certainty. "Complete neural implosion. Couldn't handle the overload of the Time Lord consciousness with the weakness of the human neural circuitry."

Her eyes shifted to the small silver device just visible through the locks of his wild brown hair, a tiny green light blinking steadily from his temple. "Tha's not gonna be you. We'll figger it out - tween you an' the Professor there's nothin' you can't fix." Her voice was stronger than she'd worried it be. Good. They had to believe, they both had to.

His hands stilled. For a second, silence stretched between them, thick and heavy. Rose moved around the control panel, her voice soft and urgent. "John?" she pressed.

"HAH! Got it!" He crowed, so suddenly Rose jumped in surprise. In an instant, he was bouncing from computer to computer frantically, his fingers flying over the keys. "Now, to get out of here, destroy the hive mind, _and_ get the team out, all in... oh, roughly nine minutes? Taking bets, my Rose? " without waiting for a reply or for Rose to formulate into actual words any of the two dozen questions that flashed through her mind, he had seized her hand and was charging across the floor.

She couldn't help it - she laughed. It was the most animated she'd seen him in months. Who knew all it took was a massive threat to the safety of the entire world, all from a tiny innocuous island north of Scotland that had been the site of a crash of what the Professor and John kept maddeningly calling "temporal flux debris."

Whatever that meant. It had taken Rose a bit longer than them but not nearly as long as anyone else to realize that that debris had been the Master Consciousness, and only because this wasn't the first incident of things falling out of time and being dragged to Earth that they'd had in the past year.

He'd dragged her over to what could only be described as a manhole set in the floor. She supposed it made sense, it being a factory and all, to have random drainage pipes. John wasted no time in levering the grate up and heaving it out of the way with a triumphant "_hah!_" His hands on his hips, he tilted his head at her. "Not too bad for only half Time Lord, eh?"

Rose smiled, reaching out one hand to lay it on his chest, feeling that single heart beating, steady and strong. Almost strong enough to fool her into thinking that he was fine, that there wasn't an imminent death hovering on the horizon. "Brilliant," she breathed.

He didn't hesitate, this time. He swept her into his arms, fingers digging into the thick leather of the jacket she wore, peppering her lips with a dozen soft, sweet kisses. She laughed, deep in her throat, nipping at his lower lip in retaliation. It was only when another alarm blared through the room, reminding them of the still-ticking countdown, that he released her, stepping back reluctantly, both of them breathing heavily, eyes shining.

Then, with one last devilish grin at her, he hopped down into the pitch black of the hole.

"John!" She gasped, hitting her knees at the side of the dark hole and peering into it.

"It's all right! Quite all right!" he called up from the murkiness and she breathed a sigh of relief. "Only about a five foot drop. We can take it all the way to the main reactor. Then we'll have to deal with the Master Consciousness, shouldn't be hard though, not with a nuclear meltdown imminent... Anyway, jump down, I'll catch you."

Rose leaned a bit further over. "Y' sure?" Last time, 'five feet' had been more like 'twelve'. John had just grinned that fool grin of his and shrugged, saying his estimating skills must have been a bit off.

"Allons-y, Rose Tyler!" came that impatient voice and Rose sighed. Swinging her feet around, she lowered them into the gloom, feeling his warm hands on her legs, just as promised. Taking one deep breath, she prepared to push herself off -

- just as the door which had been certainly and completely locked beforehand slammed open, a dark-haired woman tumbling inside.

"Professor?" Rose managed, but before she could register a response, gravity had taken hold and she'd dropped into the dark and the murk beyond.

John caught her with his warm hands on her hips, pulling her tight against his chest as if determined to ensure that she was all right despite being deprived of being able to do it with his eyes. She was content to simply grip his arms for a moment until her eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the pipe they were in.

"I thought I saw -" Rose began, but then cut off. The Professor and her secretary were on the other side of the Factory. It was their responsibility to shut down the manufacturing line that the Master Consciousness had been using to produce soldiers of Flesh. There was no way she could have gotten all the way across the island to where Rose and John were. She snapped out of her reverie to find him regarding her intently, brow creased with concern.

"Never mind," she told him. "What, eight minutes left?"

His eyes lit up. "Allons-y!" Then with her hand in tow, he took off running, Rose right next to him.

**** DW ** * ** DW ** * ** DW ****

_Two weeks later... _

Lights glared in his eyes. He groaned, throwing a hand over his eyes, and wondered what he'd ever done to them to deserve such brutal treatment to his poor, pounding head. He slowly filled in the rest of the room - white walls, single slatted window, a long hard bed underneath him with scratchy sheets itching at his skin.

The hospital ward. That's where he was. Hallucinating about Rose.

He fought with his eyes until they finally creaked open, his body refusing to respond to him and being, he considered, quite rude about the whole thing. When his hands finally began to move a few minutes later, it was with considerable consternation on his part. This human body... The sleeping, the needing to eat, the necessity of breathing - never mind, this - it was so bloody _frail_.

His movements alerted the other occupant of the room. He could see her as she raised her head from where it'd been laying on the bed next to his hand, a tousle of blonde and sleepy dark brown eyes, the rubbing pass of her fingers over her gaze as it sought his.

He forced a smile to his lips and was rewarded with one from her as well.

"Hey," she said softly. He never understood that - the human tendency to speak to the injured as if they were babies, coddling and two seconds from breaking - but then again there was a lot he frankly didn't understand about them. About himself.

She was still looking at him steadily. Waiting. Expecting. He turned his face away, looking around the room. He frowned at the multiple machines, the IV, the clipboard at the base of his bed, the beeping rhythm of his single solitary heart. He could tell her it wouldn't matter, that they wouldn't tell them what was really going on, what was the matter, but then he'd have to face her as he told her the truth of the Doctor's gift, and how terrible a curse it'd been.

"How long was I out?" he finally asked. There, a good question. Expected, appropriate, easy to answer without opening up the question of what was going on.

"Nearly a whole day. What's going on, John?" She leaned forward, arms cross on the bed. He was distracted for a moment by the sweep of her pretty blonde hair, so gentle, contrasted against the tight press of her glossy pink lips. Oh, his Rose. So clever. So very, infuriatingly, troublingly clever.

"Nothing."

She waited, patiently, dark eyes on him. He considered his options. The heat pounding at the inside of his skull hadn't faded. It was progressing so much faster than he'd thought. He'd been here only a matter of months and already it was too much. The Time Lord part of him was burning through the human part of him far faster than either side had anticipated. It wouldn't be long, now.

He returned her gaze, his eyes capturing and holding hers. And then, in faltering, unsure tones, he told her. He told her about the burning. About the information, how it all became too much. How there was too much _Time Lord_ and not enough _human_.

About how there was no way to stop it.

The entire time she sat there, quiet, still, contained. So much stronger than when he'd left her. But he shouldn't be surprised - she was his Rose, she'd cracked the walls of the universes to get back to him and done so with everyone around her telling her just how impossible it all was. The only sign that he had that she understood was the way her hands clenched into tiny, tight balls.

Slowly, he reached out, curling one hand around hers. "Rose... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Don' be," she said, harshly, her voice rough. "'Cause you're not gonna die. I'm not gonna sit here and _lose_ you. It's not gonna happen. I won't lose everything, not again-" Her sob choked her off, and she sat there, staring at him, stricken and oh so lovely, and his heart was breaking inside of him for breaking hers, but he couldn't help the angry twist of his stomach.

"I'm not him," he replied, softly, and she winced at the acidic bite of bitterness in his tone.

"I wasn't talking about _him._ I was talking about _you_. About John. About the man I'm not gon' lose." She leaned forward, gripping his hand in both of hers. "Listen. I got back to him when everyone else said it couldn't be done. I don't care what you think... I'm not losing you. We'll find a way to fix it. I swear it."

He smiled at her, his hand rising unbidden to cradle her cheek in his palm. She glowed with the certainty of her statements, with the surety of her belief in him, in them both, and he wished that it would banished the darkness that had gripped him ever since he realized what was happening to him.

"Oh, Rose... I-"

But he didn't get to finish his statement, because his head split in two. Or at least, that's what the imaginative part of his human brain figured it would feel like if it'd happened in reality. He was vaguely aware of Rose's voice - high-pitched, panicked, frightened - and the guilt of causing her pain hitting him like a ton of bricks in the pit of his stomach.

He came to with a cold rag across his forehead, eyes focusing on Rose. She hadn't realized he was lucid again, because she was on her phone, that infernal device. But this time, unlike the dozen previous times he'd seen her thumbing it just this week alone, she was calling, the small silver phone clutched to her ear like a buoy in a storm, her hand still gripping his desperately.

"Professor," she gasped, eyes squeezed shut. "It's an emergency!"

Heat of a different sort rushed through him, then. Anger, that she had someone else to reach out to. Cold jealousy biting on its heels at the relief that raced along her shoulders, at the happy smile that curved Rose's lips at whatever the other person was saying. Here was the heart of it - here was the river at the base of the canyon separating the two of them. Her precious Professor and all that entailed. It should have been him she was going to, but instead, he lay invalid in a hospital bed while this Professor of hers played hero.

He was getting really tired of always being second fiddle.

"Rose-" He managed to croak. "Don't-"

But then a familiar humming noise filled the hospital room, a shining light appearing several feet off the ground in the far corner. He felt his heart contract inside of him with disbelief, even as the waves of the ship's energy ebbed through him. He could still feel it despite the overwhelmingly human parts of him, still sense the huon energy, the psychic call of the engines like a beacon beckoning him home.

Then the TARDIS fully materialized in the corner of his hospital room, a square shining red box with a cheery black question mark light on top.

It was red. It was a red information booth. His mind ticked through the facts slowly, as if attempting not to set off the burning again. It wasn't his Sexy, but it was somehow all right. Because it was still a TARDIS, it was still a piece of home, of who he remembered being. And - his mind caught up a second later - it was still _completely impossible._

He - the OTHER He - was the last. He was the _Last_.

But not here, his mind finally acknowledged as the door to this impossible, certain hallucination swung open, revealing a tall woman with dark hair twisted up in a delicate Victorian style, her icy blue eyes traveling across him to Rose, and alighting with a smile.

"Rose Tyler," she said, laughter in her voice.

"Wh-What?" he stammered, even as Rose swung to her feet and flung her arms around the other woman. The Time Lady hugged Rose fiercely, a huge smile on her face. "What?"

"You're not supposed to be here," the ebon-haired woman stated, firmly ignoring him for the time being. She _knew_ what he was. Even through the haze of the pain and the heat, he could tell that. He could feel her, even being only half as he was. He could feel the Time Vortex in her, the insanity of the Untempered Schism imprinted on her very soul.

"_What_."

Finally, the Time Lady turned to look at him, hands on her hips, head tilted back haughtily. "And what have we-"

"_Oi!_ Space girl!" The rough voice cut through the Time Lady's words, echoing from the inside of the TARDIS. The Time Lady didn't seem surprised, only mildly annoyed at being interrupted, tilting her head over towards the door as it swung open once more.

"My secretary," she said, by way of explanation - to Rose. She was still mostly ignoring John. "Picked her up quite accidentally, quite a funny story, really. See, she was getting _married_ -"

"If this is that bloody _Felspoon_ again, I'm goin' to plant my foot up your 'Felspoon'," the red-head spat as she stepped out of the TARDIS, swinging the door shut behind her. Eyes flashed as she took in Rose, John in the hospital bed, and all of the machines beeping away merrily unawares. "Where are we?"

"I don't believe it..." Rose gasped.

John could only stare.

Donna Noble looked between the two of them with their slack-jawed expressions and pulled herself up, righteous fury flashing in her eyes. "Who the hell are you two?"


	6. Chapter 5

(( AN: Here you go, have some Bad Wolf craziness. :) Only two more chapters after this! As always, please let me know what you think. I love hearing your thoughts and ideas! :) ))

**** DW ** * ** DW ** * ** DW ****

**Chapter Five. **

_Two weeks later..._

Pale blue eyes stared at him, steady and unwavering. He knew what she would be seeing, had seen something akin to it in his memories from the Doctor. He himself bore a trace of the Untempered Schism, but distantly, like an echo. He was more than he was supposed to be, but less than he should be, and it was unnerving. Time had converged on him and it set a Time Lord's senses off, just like a cold shiver crawling down the back of the neck.

For his part, he was wracking his brain, as much as he could without triggering the pain, searching for _who_ this was.

Because it was impossible. Absolutely impossible. They'd burned. They'd all burned and he'd been there as the whole stinking planet was engulfed in fire and war, and no one had been left outside of the Time Lock. They'd all heeded the call to arms, all of the Children of that orange and red planet. They'd flocked back to protect it, to rally against the greatest threat their dimension had ever seen. There were no others - not in this dimension, not in _any_.

For her to have escaped - he couldn't imagine it. And to be on _this_ side of the walls -

Oh. The Walls.

She must have seen the recognition dawn in his eyes because she stood, a tall, imposing figure cut from fire and rage and mystery. She'd always been the epitome of what made their people great - and terrible.

And Rose and that impossible, wonderful Donna, were completely unphased, Donna staring riveted and slack-jawed as Rose explained just _how_ they knew her. Or... the other her, really.

"Human-Time Lord biological metacrisis, hm? How's that working out for you?" The Professor was smiling at him, but somehow it didn't reach her eyes. He returned her gaze levelly, shrugging one shoulder best as he could while tethered down by the mess of machines attached to the various parts of his body.

"Eh, it's not so bad, once you get past the whole mind-melting-under-its-own-brilliance bit. That part's rubbish." He settled back into his bed, eyeing her cooly. "An' how's it, hidin' in the wrong universe an' completely messin' with the proper flow of technology?"

"Ah, you noticed my little... contributions."

"They're about as subtle as a Slytheen in a nursery," he replied drily. "There're laws against this you know. They're not s'posed to have that level of technology for another fifty years, give or take a decade."

The Professor folded her arms over her chest, that smile still plastered on her lips. He wasn't deceived, he could see the gathering storm brewing in her pale blue eyes. "An' what do you plan on doin' about it? Take me back across dimensions? Stand me in the empty space where our planet used to be an' pass judgement, you an' the only other real Time Lord acting as judge and jury?"

"Aw, you know I'd never do that. Look terrible in a frock. Naw, never. But..." He pushed himself up as far as he could, face stone with his anger. "You're playin' a dangerous game here. An' it needs to stop. You know that. All of human history in front of you, an' your tinkerin' might have dangerous, catastrophic repercussions."

Donna and Rose were quiet now, watching them both, spectators to an ancient argument.

The dark-haired Time Lady straightened, head imperiously high, eyes flashing. "You _especially_ don't get to lecture me, construct. You, whom by all your precious laws, would have been destroyed even before your first thought could be formed."

"Professor!" Rose gasped, immediately to his defense. A sliver of warmth worked its way through him; perhaps she wasn't lost to him. Perhaps this Professor wasn't the replacement every cell in his body was terrified she was.

The Time Lady glanced over her shoulder, eyebrow arched. "Oh, he didn't tell you that part? No matter. Here's a truth he's been hiding: he shouldn't exist. Period." She folded her arms over her chest, regarding him steadily, a lioness sizing up her prey. "Biological metacrisises were meant for one purpose - to impart part of our own knowledge to a suitable, worthy subspecies. The whole mechanism is - was - strictly controlled. To take our own brilliance and dilute it down into something inherently inferior... well, the results are unstable, at best. At worst?" Her voice took on a tone as dark as her eyes. "They burn."

"But, there's two of ya now. You can work together. You can fix it." Rose, his Rose, was suddenly there by the side of his bed, honey-brown eyes locked on the Time Lady across from her, hand curling into his unbidden. He couldn't help the way his eyes left the other Gallifreyan in front of him and rested, irresistible, on her face.

"There's no fixin' it, Rose. The best I can do is delay it, for a time-"

"Then do it." Rose's hand was iron-tight on his. "Together, we figured out a way to get me back through the walls, an' I'm jus' a shop girl. With you _an_' him... you've got to be able to figure out a way to save him. To stabilize 'im."

"Wait a minute... you an' her? You traveled together?" Donna's finger darted between the two of them, her brow furrowed. "But I thought it was jus' the Professor and CP-2..."

"Not through time, not the way you two are," Rose replied. "But it was her idea, the dimension cannon. It was the Professor's doin', an' I helped her."

John felt the air leave his lungs and refuse to return. It was all of the dark thoughts, all of the worries that had kept him up at night had suddenly rushed back in one fell swoop, slamming hard into the base of his stomach. Rose had traveled with her. She'd built it with her. It'd all been done with _her_. The feelings of loss swept over him like a physical wave.

"How _dare_ you," he ground out through teeth clenched against the rage and hurt that writhed inside of him. Three pairs of eyes all turned to him, Donna and Rose looking surprised, the Professor looking ... collected. She always had looked collected, even in the final days, even in the face of the destruction of everything they'd known and loved. "After everything you've done-"

"Don't," the Professor bit out. "Not another word."

"-after all the time you spent on Skaro, helping Davros -"

"Davros?" Rose gasped, eyes darting to the Professor.

"-despite the fact you were warned by everyone, everyone who'd met him, just what sort of megalomaniac he was. After you stood by while he created the Daleks, the creatures that would eventually destroy worlds all over the galaxy and kill countless innocents."

Horror dawned on Rose's face, stealing over the surprise that had brightened it and darkening the beautiful brown of her gaze as she stared, unbelieving, at the Professor.

"Daleks - ain't those the things you were jus' tellin' me about? The ones tha' almost destroyed everythin'?" Donna hissed at Rose, eyes darting to the tall, dark-haired time traveler.

"I paid for those sins," the Professor replied, her voice a low growl.

John ignored the ice in the Time Lady's voice, the storm brewing in her eyes. Any other creature would have seen it as warning; he was not cowed, not by the same untempered fury that swirled around in his own heart. "How dare you hide away in this dimension, pretending to aid this planet and its people, when it was by your hand that the dimensions were divided, by your hand that the Daleks were unleashed, by _your_ hand so many died?"

"_Enough!_" the Professor roared, the only separation between their angers a slip of a golden-haired human. "Don't you think I realize what I've done? What my past hubris and naivete cost me, cost the universes? I didn't run away, construct. I did what I had to make sure that my mistake, those ... those things, those abominations - stayed locked away in one dimension, just one, to protect every other world, every other universe."

She sliced one hand through the air, a sword wielded against the horror on Rose's face, the blame on John's, the confused nervousness of Donna's. Rose had never seen her so emotional, so tenuous in her control.

So _human_ seeming.

"I exiled myself from my people, my loved ones, my world, everything I knew. For a hundred years I wandered, Torchwood always watching, always guarding me against another mistake - under my own instructions.

"When the Cybermen came, I thought it was an omen. A sign, that my deeds hadn't been forgiven or forgotten, and that I was doomed to watch this world burn just as I'd had to watch so many others. But then, Rose..." The thunder of her voice softened, her eyes darting to the young woman in question. There was steel in her back, head still held regally high, but Rose could see her nervousness. Her vulnerability. She was _afraid_. Rose just wasn't quite sure of what, yet.

"Rose gave me something good to do. Some small way of repaying my debts. So I took it. I took the challenge of finding a way through my own work, through the walls and the safeties I'd put in place against them, the Daleks, to help her find her way back where she wanted to be."

"Tha's why- That's why you made me promise... To never tell anyone there about you. You were hidin'," Rose whispered, her brow creased with confusion, fear, horror.

"Rose, I never meant-"

"Never meant wha'? Never meant to tell me?" Rose's voice was tight, hard, and the Professor's face fell, only a little, before, resolutely, it was set once more.

"I'm not the Time Lady I was when I first came t' this world," the Professor replied. "An' I'll prove it to you." She whirled, a mad rush of skirts, her eyes flashing lightning and sparks as her eyes fell on John once more.

"Well then, construct. I hope you're settled in for a long, _long_ stay, because 'tween Rose an' my secretary, looks like I've some redeemin' t' do. An' I figure you're a right spot on candidate." She braced her hands on the end of John's bed, ignoring the challenge in his glare, ignoring the looks flitting between Donna and Rose. Instead, she smiled, her pale blue eyes diamond-hard with certainty.

"Impossible biological metacrises. Impending neural implosion. Well, sounds fun. We're goin' t' figure out a way to fix you, because Rose an' I spent quite a bit o' time trying to get 'er back to you, an' I'm not goin' to fail her now. Donna!"

The ginger jumped, staring at the Professor with huge eyes, as if she still wasn't quite sure what all had just occurred. "Yeah?"

"Into Lovely, righ' now. We've got a life t' save, an' I think I have just the dohickeys to do the trick!"

**** DW ** * ** DW ** * ** DW ****

_One and a half months later..._

"Auto-destruct in ten... nine... eight... seven... si-"

**BOOM!**

"_Professor_!"

"What?" The Professor popped up from behind one of the consoles in the central complex, waving one gloved hand to stir the thick debris from the small explosion away from her. Her head tilted back and forth, searching for the source of the angry bellow.

Sure enough, there was Donna Noble, coughing and brushing debris from her clothes and hair as she rounded the corner. "Was that _really_ necessary?"

The Professor looked up at the central power source, a tall tube of crackling electricity that had, only thirty seconds ago, been overloading at a rate that would trigger a critical event that would have leveled half of the island and radiated the rest of it at unlivable levels for the next hundred years, then looked back at Donna, askance.

"It was about to _explode_-"

"Oh, that's always your excuse. Now, did you fix the white blobby transmission thingy?" Donna pointed at the computer that the Professor had just been working on, shaking rubble from her fiery red hair.

The Professor folded her arms over her chest and huffed at her companion. "I do not _always_. And yes, I reversed the beta-field transmission ray with its corresponding psychic nullification trip-switch. I also induced a feed-back loop that will prevent the Master Consciousness from creating any more Flesh soldiers. Happy?"

Donna pointed at the computer. "So... no more creepy white goopy things?"

The Professor's smile lit her face from ear to ear. "No more creepy white goopy things."

The door banged open, John leaning through, his dark eyes alight with energy. "Oi!" he bellowed. "Had a bit o' a disagreement with the Master Consciousness. Right tetchy, innit. The island's sinkin' into the ocean. Best hurry to Lovely, or you two are goin' t' be swimmin out!"

Donna and the Professor glanced at each other, then bolted for the door. John had already disappeared, and out in the corridor was Rose, looking just as dirty as John, but grinning from ear to ear, her hand clamped firmly around John's. Donna paused, looking between the two of them. There was something about them that reminded her of school kids that had been caught in the back of the gym by a stern-faced teacher.

She eyed the two of them, wiggling her finger between them. "You two been snoggin', then?"

Rose went bright red and even John found an excuse to look anywhere but at Donna. Clearing his throat roughly, he nodded his head down the hallway. "We should - uh - probably get goin'. Imminent doom an' all that." Grinning at Rose, who answered in kind, they took off running in the direction of Lovely, the Professor's TARDIS.

The Professor and Donna just looked at each other. Finally, Donna leveled a stern glare at her. "Now don' _you_ be gettin' any ideas!"

The Professor had the good graces to look astonished. "Oi! Rude!"

Donna gave her shoulder an impatient shove. "Stop bein' ridiculous and _get a move on it!_"

**** DW ** * ** DW ** * ** DW ****

_Two months later..._

John's screams of pain ripped through Lovely's interior, shattering the tranquility of the ship a second after the doors slammed open. Slung between Rose and the Professor, his hands gripped his head as the small devices attached to his temples sizzled and smoked in their attempts to keep the neural implosion under control.

He jerked as another lance of pain wracked through him, sinking to the ground with Rose hovering over him. Her hands balled in the sleeves of his jacket desperately, raising her head to stare at the Professor with terror widening her dark eyes.

"You have to give the dampeners more power! Make 'em stronger, he's burning up!"

The Professor was already whirling around the tall center tube of the TARDIS, her skirts whipping around her knees as she flipped switches and tapped buttons as frantically as a mad woman, strands of ebony hair escaping to frame her face. "I can't! I can't strengthen it anymore - they can't handle that much strain. But maybe - maybe if I use the Chameleon Arch, modify it to suppress the Time Lord psyche, we could buy us more time..."

"Do it!" Rose cried, even as John jerked and writhed underneath her, sweat slicking his skin as heat practically radiated off of him. Tears seared her eyes as she gripped his wrists, leaning over to peer into his glazed eyes. "John! John, please hold on. The Professor'll fix it, just _hold on!_"

Donna was suddenly at her side, kneeling with his jacket in her hands. "'Ere, put this under his head. Keep him from smackin' it," she said, her voice tight with the worry she was trying to keep under control.

Rose nodded dumbly, balling the jacket into a semblance of a pillow shape and then sliding it underneath John's head. They hadn't even made it all the way up the central console, but at this point Rose wasn't sure about her own ability to stand, never mind to carry John any further. It was like a scene from all the nightmares that had plagued her at night, threatening to undo that fragile happiness she'd finally, after years and years of fighting and searching and hoping, finally achieved.

Here it was - here _he_ was - slipping through her fingers. She leaned over, her heart being shredded to tiny pieces as she listened to his cries of pain, to whisper in his ear. "John. Hold on. For me... please."

"R-Rose-"

She straightened instantly, grabbing his hands and clutching them to her chest. His dark eyes were focused on her, but only just, his mouth twisted in a grimace betraying the agony he was suffering. He struggled to offer a lopsided smile, one that shot right through Rose's stomach. She _knew_ that look, that surrender...

"Don't -" He scrunched his face in pain, forcing it smooth once more to look at her. "Don't forget," he managed, raising a shaking, sweating hand to her cheek, fighting hard to get the words out, to form them through the haze of his burning brain.

"Stoppit," Rose managed, her voice breaking just like her heart. "The Professor'll fix it. You'll see... Jus' hold on, all right? We're goin' t' use the- The Chameleon Arch-"

He tried to smile, failed, his face twisted in pain. "Won' work," he panted. "Half human. It'll... jus' kill me in a different way... But it's OK, Rose. Because I had- I had you- And you're brilliant... So don't cry, and don't forget-" His hand quivered as it stroked the curve of her cheek, his face smoothing suddenly. "I love you."

Then his hand slid from her face and dropped to the floor.

Rose felt her heart drop from inside of her, her hands still clutching his to her chest. Silence blanketed the ship as everything held its breath - the Professor, frozen in her mad flurry, a strange headpiece in her hands, Donna with one hand clamped over her mouth... even Lovely, the central tube of the TARDIS darkening slowly as if the very ship itself was grieving his loss.

"John?" Rose whispered, reaching out to touch his cheek. Already it was cooling, the heat that had been burning its way out finally leaving him. "John?" she repeated brokenly, her hands dropping to his chest, seeking, searching.

Nothing. No steady heart beat. Just silence.

"John..." Her voice cracked as she smoothed the folds of his deep blue jacket over his chest, tears sliding, unbidden and unheeded, to drop like rain, sprinkled across his still body. "John, don't- Please, don't-"

"Rose, I'm sorry..." the Professor said softly, dropping to her knee and reaching out a slow hand to curl around Rose's shoulder. The blonde woman didn't even look up at her, her hands still moving over John's chest, as if unbelieving that there was only stillness under her fingertips, searching for the ever-present beating of his heart.

"No- no, no- I won't-" Rose hiccupped softly. "I won't lose him... Not again..."

Her fingers felt a long, slim tube in the breast pocket of his coat. Trembling, they smoothed it back to reveal his sonic. The sonic that he had spent months painstakingly rebuilding from the scraps of technology available through Torchwood. That he'd only actually been able to get working with the aid of Lovely, regardless of the Professor's thoughts on that matter.

Her hand curled around it, clutching it to her chest as she raised her head. The Professor was saying something to her. She was talking in words that should have been reassuring but were only empty, hollow.

She should know that Rose wasn't going to let this be. They all should have known. She'd faced down the Emperor of the Daleks to be with her Doctor; she'd torn apart the walls of the Universes to get back to him; she'd fought tooth and nail to protect this piece of him that she'd been given, this chance of happiness in her wonderful, infuriating, so familiar and yet so new Metacrisis.

Her hand gripped the sonic to her heart even as sobs heaved their way through her, heedless of the Professor's words, the weight of Donna's hands on her shoulders. She shook them off, standing with the sonic still clutched in her hands, and stumbled forward, into the shadow of the console, the engine of the TARDIS stretching up over her head.

None of it mattered. Only John mattered, and she would bring him back.

She would, because otherwise, there was nothing left.

"I _am_ the Bad Wolf," she whispered, leveling the sonic at the tall center tube in the middle of the ship's interior.

Realization dawned across the Professor's face, chased by horror. "Rose, _no!_"

Rose pressed the button. The screwdriver screamed to life, and the entire ship groaned as cracks began to appear in the tall, crystalline tube. The Professor was moving, but it was too late. The tube creaked in protest, then in a single thunderous note, shattered, glass scattering like meteorites.

A single golden thread curled its way up from the heart of the TARDIS, caressing Rose's cheek. She closed her eyes and pulled it into her. The console screamed as metal was peeled back by the force of the Time Vortex being drawn from the depths of the ship, warping levels and popping dials, sending splatters of twisted metal flung everywhere.

The Bad Wolf closed her eyes, tears lit by the golden light radiating from her. "I create myself."


	7. Chapter 6

(( AN: Only one more chapter and an epilogue for you guys to let me know what you think of this story! Have a nice long one. :) And, as always, enjoy! ))

******** DW ** * ** DW ** * ** DW ****

**Chapter Six.**

_Two months later..._

**I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself.**

The Professor lowered her arms to find a scene out of her wildest, deepest nightmares: her Lovely, the center tube that housed the very heart of her TARDIS, cracked open and shattered, Rose juxtaposed between the two of them, golden light shimmering along her edges. There was one horrified moment of silence before suddenly the storm that was the Bad Wolf began to rage, the gale force of her fury tearing at everything inside of the ship.

The Time Lady was battered backwards, nearly off of her feet. Donna clung one-armed to a support strut nearby, her hands over her head and and her eyes wide round circles of fear and confusion.

"Rose!" the Professor pushed forward, straining to reach the blonde woman, Lovely's cries of pain screaming through her head. It was like Rose was hollowing out her insides as well, pulling them into the twisting maelstrom that was the Bad Wolf. "Stop this! You're going to destroy everything, Rose! He wouldn't want that!"

**I will have him safe. I will have him alive once more.**

"He's gone! You have to let him go!" Terror gripped the Professor's stomach in its vice-like fingers, but terror for more than just Rose. She'd taken the Vortex into herself once before to save the Doctor; to do so had changed her more than perhaps anyone other than those of Time Lord blood knew. This time, fueled by grief and loss, she had become what they always feared: a vengeful god.

As if reading the Professor's very thoughts, the being that was now only partly Rose raised her hands, her rage ripping at the walls and consoles, tearing at the Professor and Donna's skin and clothes, glittering with glass and other debris.

**I take Time into my hands. I take reality and I mold it. It will be as I will it.**

"Stop, Rose! Please!"

For a moment - for half of a hopeful heartbeat - Rose looked back at her, tears draped along her cheeks, the sharp edges of desolate loss in those dark depths. Then the winds settled around the still form of John, head pillowed by Donna's coat and smoking neural dampeners on his temple.

The Bad Wolf howled and raged.

Her digital pen in hand, the Professor leveled it at Rose and, for the first time in as long as she could remember, hesitated. The cold, cynical part of her was screaming in time with Lovely's screams, torn into pieces even as the Bad Wolf's fury dug through the TARDIS's insides.

But, Rose... Her chance at redemption.

Perhaps it was time to stop taking the easy way out. Whirling, she turned towards Donna, dropping to her knees even as she dug through her pockets - bigger on the inside - for a very familiar leather band.

"What c'n we do?" the red-head gasped, a single bloody line etched along one cheek as the cacophony raged around them.

"Right now?" the Professor replied, a cock-eyed smile on her lips and a crazy, insane, possibly impossible plan formulating in her mind. There was no question what was needed right now - something Rose would approve of, something John would have grinned madly at, something that she herself could only hope would work.

"Something crazy," she said, and slapped Donna's hand onto the Vortex Manipulator.

**** DW ** * ** DW ** * ** DW ****

_Three weeks later..._

When Rose finally found him, he was esconsed in the one room in the Tyler residence that made him feel the most secure - the library. It wasn't even the main library, it was a study tucked down out of the way near the pantry, its shelves lined from floor to ceiling with rows and rows of books. Relief crept along her limbs as she leaned against the door, watching him quietly, her heart thudding so loudly in her chest she was sure the entire house could hear it.

He was standing near the window, a book in hand but hanging slack at one side as he watched the sun dip slowly beneath the horizon. She didn't speak, sure he'd know she was there. He hadn't lost that bit of him, after all.

"How long was it?" he asked, without looking over his shoulder.

"Linear or personal?" she replied, answer enough in itself.

His hand tightened around the book, but he didn't turn around. She could see the blinking of the green lights on the dampeners attached to his temples, and, somehow, it was reassuring. Because it meant that, at least for now, he was safe. Or at least as safe as it was going to get until they figured out how to save him.

Because they _were_ going to figure out how to save him.

"Both."

"Linear, three years. Jus' like I told you." She didn't move forward; she didn't dare. He was fire and rage and so very angry with her right now, despite the fact she didn't want him to be. "Personally... We overlapped about two an' a half years at Torchwood - the dimensional cannon wasn't ready and we needed more time. So the Professor used her TARDIS, Lovely, to sustain a paradox to give us more time to make sure it was working."

"Six years..." He closed his eyes. He'd had two, perhaps three, with her. How could it compare? "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I... I promised." Rose moved forward then, putting her hand on John's arm. "Look. I didn' know why she wanted to keep it quiet - I didn' know _who_ she was. She didn' tell. She jus' made me promise that when I got back to the original universe, I'd never breathe a word. I jus' assumed that it was so you wouldn't threaten reality by tryin' to find her."

"So _he_ wouldn't."

Rose jerked back at the scathing tone in his voice, staring at him with wide, dark eyes. Chastened, she turned away. "Yeah. The Doctor."

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes, noting her hunched shoulders, the way she was biting her lower lip. This was ridiculous... He knew how childish he was being, but he couldn't help it. He was so incredibly, unbelievably insecure when it came to the issue of his identity... and it didn't seem to be getting better. All he was doing was hurting the best thing in his life. His single, short, human life.

Inhaling slowly, he reached out and took her hand. She looked up at him, surprised, and her astonishment hurt just a little. He'd never meant to seem distant or closed off to her, of all people.

"I'm sorry," he murmured. "I'm still figuring out what it means to not be him. I'm certainly not sure what it means to you."

"Y'know... for the longest time, I wasn't sure, either," Rose said softly, and he caught the glimmer of tears in the corners of her eyes. She raised her head to look at him, a smile twisting at those full lips of hers. "But, workin' with you at Torchwood, travelin' with you. Dealin' with all those anomalies. It was like old times - like me an' him."

His single, aching heart began to sink in his chest. So he was just a replacement for what she really wanted - who she really wanted. He turned back towards the window to mask the pain that thought caused him. Pain worse than any neural implosion ever could be.

"Hey-" she said roughly, hand on his chest. "I'm not finished."

The gentle pressure of her palm caused him turn fully to her again, looking down at her quietly. Part of him knew how vulnerable, how _scared_, he looked right then, but he couldn't find the strength to care. His entire being hinged on this golden-haired woman and the words she was holding.

"Like me an' him, but not," she repeated, slowly. "Because there's a difference. Because when you look at me, you don' look away an instant before I can see the love in your eyes. Because when Mum cooks, you're there to suffer through it jus' like the rest of us." She inhaled slowly, her fingers sliding over his chest, smoothing the lapels of his shirt, hiding her gaze from him momentarily. "Because you stayed when he had to leave. Because you told me you loved me... and he never could."

Finally, she raised her gaze to him, perhaps because she could feel how hard his heart was pounding under her fingertips. "You're him. You are, and you shouldn't be ashamed of that because he's saved so many, done such wonderful things, that impossible man... But you're _more_ than that. You're the part of him that he could never give me. You're the him that can - an' has - put me first, above the universe, above travelin', above everythin'."

Her hands slid up gently, framing his face with her long, tapered fingers. "You're the piece of him tha's mine, and tha's _wonderful_, because I love you more than anythin' in the world."

The old him - the Doctor - would have held all of the emotions welling up inside of him tightly, contained them with a supreme act of willpower, and only let the smallest little inkling out. Maybe to have held her hand or hugged her. He would still have kept himself back from her, because the Doctor couldn't stay with her and he knew it.

But John... He was hers and he knew it.

His arms slid around her waist, pulling her into him, anchoring her warmth against his chest as his lips sought hers desperately. It'd been months - agonizing months - since that long wind-swept beach and the kiss he'd shared with her then, but the instant their lips collided the time didn't matter. The worry didn't matter. Temporal anomalies, Time Ladies, paradox time streams... None of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was her and the kisses he showered across her lips.

His hands tangled in her hair, her hands twisted in his shirt, and neither of them wanted to be even an hair's breadth away from each other. Her soft laughter brushed against his ear as he let his lips worship the curve of her neck, nipping and nuzzling and unable to stop smiling for even a moment.

When she finally pulled him back, he stopped only reluctantly, his forehead resting against hers. Her dark eyes locked on his, even as her hands flattened against the curve of his shoulder blades.

"I love you," he murmured into the velvety soft blanket of darkness wrapped around them, rewarded by the shimmering smile that spread across her lips. She gripped him closer, her lips drifting forward to brush the tip of his nose before retreating.

"Stay with me tonight?" she whispered, and her voice quivered with a note of need that resonated right through him.

His smile lit the violet twilight, thumb skimming along the plane of her cheek tenderly. "Yeah," he replied, and bent in to kiss her again. He was pretty sure he was never going to stop, not now, not ever... impending neural implosion be damned. He was going to spend the rest of his days loving Rose Tyler.

**** DW ** * ** DW ** * ** DW ****

_One and a half months later..._

**"Auto-destruct in nine minutes." **

Donna and the Professor hit the ground hard, the breaths knocked from them, even as the flashing red lights and distant yells slowly penetrated the fog of disorientation that clung to both of them. They were in a hallway, metal walls on either side and pipes coursing through the ceiling above them. There was this smell to it, too. A smell that was oh so familiar but that Donna couldn't quite place.

"Oh bloody 'ell, wha' was that?" Donna hissed, her usual fire waylaid by her inability to catch her breath. She gripped her stomach, slowly rolling onto her knees as her eyes darted around.

"Time travel without a shell. It's right miserable," the Professor replied, already on her feet though not looking too much better than Donna herself. She moved over to the red-headed woman, reaching out a hand to help her up. "You all righ'?"

"Yeah, I reckon..." Donna made it fully vertical and groaned, gripping her stomach still. "Let's not do that again any time soon..."

The Professor glanced at the Time Vortex Manipulator on her wrist wryly. "Yes ma'am. Now, come on. We've got to save all o' reality."

Donna hurried to keep up with the Professor, glancing over at the dark-haired Time Lady as they made their way through the halls of the building, the alarms screaming over head and a curious sense of deja vu picking at all of her nerves. She couldn't quite place where they were, but she had the strangest feeling like she should have known - should have known right away, even.

"What's Rose done? What's she become?"

"Something terrible," the Professor replied in a terse voice, then sighed. "She took the Time Vortex into herself. She's done it before, she told me. Last time it was to save the Doctor, now it's t' save her John... But this time, there is no saving him. Every time she brings him back, he'll burn. She'll keep tryin', though, because I know Rose. She's goin' t' tear all of reality apart jus' to try an' save him an' it's not going to work because there's only one way of savin' him an' neither he nor I would do it."

Donna grabbed the Professor's arm, pulling her to a stop. "There's a way to save him?"

"Yeah," the Professor said with the faintest of dry, humorless smile. "But it'd likely kill Rose, she's just so... human. Now, however..." She heaved a sigh. "We don't have a choice."

"What're we doing here, then?" Donna asked, as they started hurrying down the hallway again.

"Somethin'... interestin'. And hopefully - if I'm clever enough, which I'll warrant I am, I _hope_ I am - it'll fix things."

"When're we goin', then?"

The Professor glanced over at Donna as they came to a stop in front of a large iron door, complete with a large iron lock that was thrown. The Time Lady peeked through, apparently seeing what she wanted to see, because she ran her digital pen down the lock, then made a twisting motion with it pointed at the lock. The lock clicked open.

"C'mon, give 'er a shove," she instructed Donna. The red-head shot her a look but when the Professor just kept waiting, expectantly, sighed and threw her weight against the door. It creaked open, the Professor half-tumbling inside.

She paused once inside, then finally stepped back to let Donna in.

**"Auto-destruct in eight minutes.**"

"We're going to make ourselves a way to fix this mess."

The Professor darted from one control panel to another, her fingers furiously darting over the various buttons and levers. She was muttering to herself, leaving Donna to follow her helplessly, unable to discern what the dark-haired time traveler was doing.

"Professor, what-" she began, but the Professor darted off. Heaving a sigh, she hurried after her. "Professor? Why are -"

"One second!" the Professor hummed anxiously, raising her eyes to where one of the steel plates in the wall let out a sharp hiss, a light on the right hand panel blinking from red to yellow. "Now, to input the necessary biometric parameters..." She leveled her digital pen at the monitor in front of her, a quick, high-pitched electronic sound like that of an old-school modem broadcasting from it, the light at the end of it a brilliant purple.

The light on the door blinked yellow several times, then blinked to green, finally clicking open with a long, low hiss.

The Professor took one step towards the panel as it slid to one side. "There's one big problem, one very massive detail standing in the way of our fixing this... We can't go back on our own timelines. Once we set foot in that hospital ward, we became part of events. We became fixed and we can't go back and change it."

She looked over at Donna, who'd drawn even with her side. "We need someone else, someone who hasn't been part of events, to manipulate them in a way that might - just might, if we are _very_ lucky and _very_ clever - solve our problem."

Donna swallowed hard. "But... who?" she asked in a whisper.

The Professor beamed, looking forward towards the panel as it clicked to a stop, revealing the blonde-haired woman beyond. Her face was still 'drying' as it were, the gummy white smoothness of a Flesh face setting as they watched, becoming pink and defined. Indistinguishable from the human she'd been molded on, as two dark eyes opened and focused on the other women in the room.

"Who better, than Rose herself?"

The Flesh version of Rose took a step, then stumbled, gripping her stomach with a pained look on her face. The Professor hurried forward, gripping her elbow. "Hang in there, you're copin' with her altered molecular structure. It'll be all right, just give the Flesh time to set."

"Nngh, 'm gonna hurl," the version of Rose muttered, gripping a hand to her mouth.

The Professor beamed. "Now that's exactly right! Brilliant!"

The Flesh-Rose cast an annoyed glare at the Professor, even as Donna gripped the Time Lady's arm, dragging her to one side. "Are you sure about this?" Donna whispered. "'Ow's she's supposed to know how to fix things?"

"Right! Well, glad you asked!" The Professor turned so she was facing both of them, one hand held up and a particular look in her blue eyes. "I've got it all figured out. Timelines and all. But it'd be faster to show you than tell you, so..." Her hands clenched for a moment, then reached out and seized the Flesh Rose's shoulders.

"Hold still," she instructed her, then leaned forward and smacked her forehead into the blonde woman's.

"Bloody '_ell!_" Rose gasped, gripping her forehead. "Ah! You want me to take the Vortex Manipulator and intersect her own time lines? But that's- it shouldn't work!"

"It will, it'll work. It's most important you get the two pieces you need, d'you understand? Tap into the real Rose's memories - see what she's sacrificed, what she's done for him. Remember that, d'you hear me? _Use_ that." The Professor touched her own forehead tenderly, then reached up and grabbed the Ganger's shoulders. "Now... for the most important part..." She inhaled slowly, her pale blue eyes dead serious.

"How to grow a TARDIS." And then she smacked her forehead into the Ganger's once more.

They parted, both cursing and gripping their foreheads, and the Flesh Rose gasped repeatedly as her mind processed the knowledge the Time Lady had given her.

Finally, one hand on her forehead, she turned to the Professor and held one expectant hand out. "I understand."

"Good." The Professor unstrapped the oversized wrist band from her arm, handing it to the Flesh woman standing in front of her. "It all depends on you, Rose Tyler. You've one last chance to fix things and save the man you love."

The blonde fixed dark eyes on the Time Lady's own. "Thank you, Professor," she said softly, then, with a shock of electricity, was gone.

Into the silence that stretched between them, the alarm blared once:

"**Auto-destruct in sixty seconds.**"

The Professor and Donna looked at each other, horror stealing across the red-head's face.

"Wait a second - I know where we are. This is the island, innit? And in two minutes, you stop the self-destruct... but then the island. It _sinks into the ocean_. How the hell are we gonna get off? We can't exactly saunter up and ask our previous selves to bum a ride!"

The Professor simply gazed back at Donna with steady, dark eyes. Donna inhaled sharply. "... you don' have a plan for it, do yah? This is a suicide run, innit?"

The ebon-haired Time Lady stepped forward, taking both of Donna's hands in her own and squeezing them tightly. "Donna, I'm so sorry - for _everything_. You've been brilliant, absolutely brilliant... You didn' deserve this."

Tears shone in Donna's eyes as the countdown blared overhead, aborting right at six. Half an island away, the Professor had just blown up the countdown computer, freezing the self-destruct at six. Soon they would be making their escape to Lovely, disappearing just in time to see the rest of the island sink into the massive sinkhole spreading from where the Master Consciousness had been at its center.

They had perhaps five minutes left.

Donna let out a soft sob, burying her face in her hands. Quietly the Professor reached out, wrapping her arms around the red-head. There they stayed as the factory began to shudder and collapse around them, slowly sinking in upon itself.


	8. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven.**

_Two months later..._

**I will have him safe. I will have him alive. Reality **_**will**_** bend to my will. **

The goddess that had once been a human closed her eyes, the very walls of the TARDIS encasing her beginning to unravel. Through their strands, flickering like hints of things that weren't actually there - or perhaps weren't quite fully reality yet - were images of stars and planets, moons and asteroids, all of the universe, being pulled towards her outstretched fingers.

All the while, her song, full of rage and loss and wailing determination, echoed throughout the furthest reaches, making the very fabric of space and time quiver.

She brushed the edges of her containment, and pushed harder. Lovely groaned, creaking ominously as it struggled to contain the apocalyptic force raging within it. Her fury had filled it to the very brim, beginning to unravel the ship at its very foundation. Still it fought, its soul, its very being rebelling against the unnatural power inside of it. All of space and time and all of that knowledge and it would not allow it to escape.

**I see it all. I will have him safe. I will have him alive because I will it so.**

Once again, she brought him back. Once again, his mind burned against her consciousness, the pain unending and unbearable. Even with all of her powers, she couldn't contain it. She released him, reaching further out, pulling more to her, clawing at all of reality for the ability to do what her heart was screaming at her to do.

Reality groaned against the weight of her, and somewhere in deep space a previously stable, normal star abruptly went super nova, blasting heat and light into the drape of the space around it. Worlds trembled; volcanoes spewed; moons darkened in the sky. Every planet, every rock floating through the endless spread of the universe, every speck of dust trembled at the fire and the maelstrom that was the Bad Wolf.

All of the universe knew her name and trembled.

But still she could not save him. Furiously, she brought him back time and time again, only to have to release him as he began to burn once again. She battered against the bare containment of the TARDIS around her, determined to take every star, pour every last ounce of energy into him until he was fixed. Until he was alive. Until he was safe.

And still he burned.

Her words became a howl, a battle cry raged across the vast breadth of all the galaxies in all the worlds, and still he burned.

Into that endless howl, the raging cacophony that was the Bad Wolf's fury, a light appeared. A light that faded, then grew stronger, only to fade and regrow once more. Then, in the middle of the TARDIS that had been called Lovely appeared a blue box, complete with a police sign on the door and a glowing light on top.

The endless madness that was the Bad Wolf stilled, and the human in her knew it instantly.

She took shape once more, her turbulence calming, even as she approached the shining blue box, reaching to put a hand on its door. She hesitated, but then pushed.

With a soft click, the door swung open, revealing herself.

Only, the Rose that was inside was nothing like the Rose that had become the Bad Wolf. Her skin was cracked with the passing of ages, pale white and having lost much of its shape. Deep lines had been worn in her skin, her hair brittle and dry. She was ancient, a hundred years old, she was Flesh, and she was disintegrating.

But still she watched the real her, the other her who she had been sent to fix, as the golden light swirled in her eyes.

**I see all of Time and Space. You are an anomaly.**

The Flesh that was Rose and yet not didn't answer. Instead, she raised her hands. Sitting in her palms was a silver fob watch, an innocuous device, except for the Gallifreyan etchings swirled into one side. The Flesh Rose waited as Bad Wolf stared at the watch.

"Take it," the Ganger prompted. "Take it and you can not only save your John, but yourself, an' all the rest of the galaxy."

The golden-eyed Rose hesitated, but then reached out, touching the tip of her finger to the small silver device. It clicked open, and a single tendril of golden light escaped from its clutches, curling through the air and diving into the goddess's mind. She inhaled sharply, her eyes rolling back in her head as she accessed it, for it was a memory, a Time Lord's memory, a whisper of him, contained in the fob watch and held close for all these years, held for this moment, to show her what she needed to see.

She could see the Ganger in the hospital, through her John's eyes. Their voices echoed through her mind, followed by what he hadn't said - _he knew how to save himself_.

Rage battled at Rose's control. Rage that he had known how and not told her. Grief that he had loved her so much that he carried it to his grave. Guilt that it would take this, the imminent destruction of the universe, to realize just how far he'd go to protect her. Almost as far as she herself would go... perhaps further, because he'd not raged. He'd simply accepted it.

Tears slid down Rose's cheeks, and when she spoke, her voice was small, and human, and thick with grief.

"He shoulda told me..."

"You wouldn't 've told him, if you were in his place," the Ganger pointed out. "Do you understand it, the memory?"

Rose nodded once. "Yes. It's so simple... so brilliant."

The Ganger stepped back, revealing the beautiful arches and graceful sweep of the TARDIS behind her. A smile cracked over her wrongly-shaped lips. "She'll help you bring him back, an' make it right, like you saw in the memory. She can do it, she's young and strong and was raised for you two an' you two alone. But she won' do that while you're holding her sister's life in you an' killin' that sister for the lack of it. Let go of Lovely, Rose."

Rose closed her eyes, pain creasing her forehead. "I- I can't- I can't let it go... I don't know how." Her voice broke, frightened.

"It's all right. Give it to me."

Rose opened her eyes, fixing the Ganger with a sharp look. "It's killin' me. It'll fry you in minutes."

"How do you think this is going to end, Rose? Two of me? I've been alive for a hundred years, for this sole purpose. To come back, to take the heart of Lovely, and to make sure that my John is saved." The Flesh Rose stepped forward, a hard look on her fractured and decaying face. "I've ripped walls apart for him. I've been prepared to stay on a dying planet for him. I've risked an endless existence in the great nothingness between the worlds for him. I will save him and you will let me because you an' I are the same person."

Rose hesitated a second more before nodding once. "All righ'. An'... thank you."

The Ganger cocked a sliver of a smile. "Jus' make good memories with him, Rose. An' don't forget how much we love him."

"I won't. I swear."

Then the Rose that had lived a hundred years for this moment, the Rose who had crossed the real Rose's timeline not one, but twice, all for the man who was still laying, lifeless and still in the fractured TARDIS, raised her hands and pressed them to Rose's head.

The Vortex, the heart of Lovely, flowed out of Rose into the Ganger.

The Ganger raised her hands and the light spread from them. When it dimmed, John was no longer laying outside but inside, his hands folded on his chest. Then the light dragged her from the ship and through the doors of the young, new, quiveringly excited TARDIS. A sharp crack and the doors slammed shut behind her.

The TARDIS hummed to life and disappeared from inside of its sister TARDIS.

Slowly, the light began to pull pieces of the Ganger Rose away, like tiny speckles of dust being flung into the air. She climbed the last few steps to the central console and reached out a hand that was no longer pink and human but white and goopy and rapidly decaying right in front of her eyes, touching the shattered remains of the tube.

The time vortex rippled forward, a golden liquid poured back into its container, and as it did so, it took the Ganger with it, until there was nothing left except a few stray specks that stirred into oblivion on the gentle breeze.

**** DW ** * ** DW ** * ** DW ****

_One and a half months later..._

Debris showered around them, so thick and fast that they couldn't even see the far console to their side for the obscuring of the dirt and rubble. They were crouched against one of the giant monitors, the large square tilted overhead to provide some modicum of shelter against the rapidly disintegrating roof above them.

Donna was curled into the protective cave of the monitor, the Professor braced over her, her teeth set in frustration and fear as the floor bucked underneath her feet.

"Tha's the central support givin' way," she said, low and terse underneath her breath, tilting her head down to look at the quivering human, her cheeks streaked with grey debris and tracks that betrayed the path of tears over her skin. She offered a faint smile, though it didn't reach her eyes. Donna simply sniffed, rubbing at her nose.

"Never thought it'd end like this, y'know? I mean, I'm just a temp from Chiswick... Best I coulda hoped for was t'not die a lonely spinstress with me mum raggin' on me for it..."

The Professor frowned at her. "None o' that. You're brilliant, Donna Noble."

Donna snorted softly. "No I'm not. I'm nothin'."

The Time Lady reached out, taking Donna's face in her hands, tilting the red-head's face up to look at her fully. "Hey. You are not. You saved my life, Donna Noble. Several times, in fact! I couldn't've done it without you. You're _brilliant._"

The tiniest of smiles made its appearance on Donna's lips, faltering only as the factory around them rumbled and groaned in protest, a sharp crack as one of the cement blocks forming the floor cracked in half.

"If you say so," she managed.

The Professor grinned. "I do. Trust me - I'm a Professor. I know these things."

"You're not _really_..."

The Time Lady straightened slightly. "I am too! I'll show you my degrees, jus' as soon as we get back to my Lovely. I've got six o' 'em, though y' won't be able to read 'em since they're in Old Gallifreyan, but they've got seals on 'em, all impressive like. Very official!"

Donna choked on a laugh and the Professor gathered the other woman closer to her chest. "Tha's it, Donna. Smile to the end, yeah?"

"Yeah," Donna whispered, sobbing softly now even as a portion of the floor caved in and dropped away, the rest of the floor tilting dangerously. The Professor reached out and grabbed hold of the metal frame of the computers, despairingly searching their surroundings for somewhere - anywhere - safe.

"You an' me, Donna Noble. The Professor an' her secretary, right to the ends o' it all. Savin' the universe!"

Donna didn't respond, just buried her face against the Professor's chest, her shoulders shaking with the force of her fear and grief. The Professor gripped her a bit tighter, protectively, gritting her teeth. If there was only one thing she could have done differently, it would have been to find a way to save Donna Noble. She didn't care about herself - she was responsible for the deaths of millions, if not billions - but Donna was wonderful, brave, brilliant. She was never supposed to die in a decaying factory by the Time Lady's own hands.

"I'm sorry, Donna. I'm so sorry," she whispered.

The floor groaned and bucked beneath them, and the Professor buried her face against Donna's hair, prepared for the end.

What she wasn't prepared for, however, was a sudden silence, and a firmness of the floor beneath her knees.

The Professor's head snapped up, Donna shoving at her arm, and they found themselves sitting in the middle of a brightly lit console room, a graceful circular panel and an arching glass tube filled with all the colors of the universe glittering light into their eyes. The ship had formed around them, and her Time Lady sense didn't take long to realize that they were already in flight, far away from the threatening island and its inevitable collapse.

Then the Time Lady's eyes traveled to the two figures standing next to the central console and she laughed softly, sitting back on her heels.

"S'about time you two got 'ere."

"Sorry," Rose said, flicking several switches on the central panel, a gentle smile on her face. The TARDIS hummed and the central tube moved up and down rapidly. She glanced over at the tall man next to her, reaching out and taking his hand in hers. "Took us a bit to get our bearings. What with us not knowin' what each of us knows yet."

John threaded his fingers through Rose's, a slow smile on his face. "We're managing, though."

The Professor climbed to her feet, offering a hand to haul Donna up as well. The red-head looked between the two of them, confusion across her face. "I don' understand. How is he alive? What's goin' on?"

The Professor looked between the two of them as they exchanged a long look, then turned her gaze back to her companion. "They split the knowledge between them. It's the only way, really. Divide the Time Lord consciousness and it becomes bearable for the brain again. But it'd be impossible for anyone who wasn't already a Time Lord, or..." her eyes traveled to rest on Rose, "already touched by the Vortex itself. A normal human with even half of a Time Lord's consciousness would have burned, just like John was..."

"Even then, it wouldn't have worked without a TARDIS to stabilize the neural transfer," Rose added, gazing at John with long-lashed eyes liquid gold and loving.

"Well, that's bollocks. The Professor had a TARDIS the entire time," Donna replied, a furrow in her brow. The Professor snorted, folding her arms over chest.

"Lovely couldn't 've done it. She's got _my_ imprint on her briode nebulizer. They needed a new TARDIS, one that could support the psychic transfer and continue to maintain it, or else it'd degenerate an' we'd be back to square one. So," she spread her hands wide to indicate the new, young TARDIS, humming and vibrating with life and exuberance. The two standing near the control panel smiled in response.

"Their very own TARDIS, grown from a piece of the same TARDIS who chose the Doctor. The perfect vessel to keep them both from burning in ways that my Lovely never could."

"So...you two? Each know half o' everythin'?"

John grinned lop-sidedly, jamming his free hand deep into his pocket as he rocked back on his heels. "Well, strictly speakin' the process has given us a telepathic link. As long as we're touching, we both know everything, we're just ... sharin' the burden." He turned his gaze to Rose, his grin turning into a slow, wide smile, unrestrained in its joy. "Together? We know _all_ of everythin'."

At that, the red-headed temp from Chiswick seemed to snap out of her disbelief. She stormed over to John, and promptly, smacked him in the shoulder - _hard_. John flinched, looking over at Donna with an astonished expression on his face.

"Wh-_what?_"

"Know everythin' my ass. Took your own sweet time rescuin' us now, didn' ya?" Donna bellowed. "Stopped for a snog, did ya? Popped out t' Mars for the weekend, I s'pose, leavin' us behind? Bloody irresponsible, space man!"

"Oi! We came right here!" John protested, then wilted slightly. "Well... first we ended up on Raxicoricofallapatoria..."

"Rocksy-_what?_" Donna screeched.

Rose pressed a hand to her lips as John and Donna began arguing loudly, the red-head stalking after the half-Time Lord as he dodged around the center console, pressing buttons and flinging levers and only occasionally stopping and looking at Rose beseechingly. The blonde woman simply leaned back against the railing, watching them.

The Professor folded her arms on the railing next to Rose, watching the two of them. The two women shared a glance, a smile on both of their lips. The Time Lady closed her eyes, reaching out, her hearts jumping hard inside of her chest. There, just outside of this energetic, baby TARDIS, she could feel the pulse and beat of her own TARDIS, her precious Lovely, restored to perfection. Her home, her other half, was safe. She opened her eyes and fixed them on the blonde-haired woman with the golden eyes to one side of her. She doubted Rose's eyes would ever be their normal brown ever again.

"Well, Rose Tyler. I hope you're proud of yourself. Once again you've done it. You've found your impossible man."

Rose smiled softly, then sobered abruptly, her smile falling from her face. "I made a right mess o' things, though. I can feel it. I unhinged Time itself. There're things that're happening that should never have happened, and it's all because of me." Her voice choked with regret and guilt. The Professor watched her steadily, waiting.

She didn't have to wait long. The woman who had been Bad Wolf looked over at the Time Lady, her face set. "We're not staying. We're going to fix it. Everything I messed up, every one I harmed... We'll find a way to set it right."

The Professor smiled gently, reaching out and putting her hand on Rose's shoulder. "I believe you will, Rose Tyler. I believe you will."

**** DW ** * ** DW ** * ** DW ****

(( AN: And that's it! The end! Well, there's an epilogue on Sunday. Still! What did you guys think? Worth a sequel? Or maybe a different take on Ten and Rose entirely? Let me know what you think, either in reviews or a PM. I read every word you guys drop my way.

Once again, thanks to lastincurableromantic for Beta reading! This is a MUCH stronger and more polished 'fic thanks to her. :) See you on Sunday! ))**  
**


	9. Epilogue

**Epilogue.**

Pete Tyler sat behind an incredibly large and incredibly impressive red oak desk, complete with his name on a little golden plaque on the corner of it. It was in the very middle of an incredibly large and incredibly impressive office, medals and other distinguishing awards lining the shelves. They weren't just his, they were Torchwood's, but as he was the head of Torchwood One, he was the head of displaying them for all the world to see.

Right now, however, all the medals and awards in the world weren't enough to ease the pounding in his head.

Once again, he regarded the two women standing in front of him with an expression somewhere between exasperation and frustration.

"So you're telling me that all of the strange things that have been happening, all of these... temporal flux anomalies... are because my parallel daughter's half-human boyfriend died?" The dark-haired woman, that blasted Time Lady who'd never stopped being a thorn in his side, nodded once, a serious expression on her face despite the fact her eyes were sparkling madly. She was enjoying this, he just knew it. "And she took this ... time and space vertical-"

"Vortex," the ginger supplied.

"-vortex, whatever, into her head and started ripping apart reality, which is why everything is acting oddly?" Another nod from the Professor. "And that you two went back in time to create a fake Rose who you then sent even further back in time to steal a memory from John while he was in the hospital and the piece of TARDIS ship-"

"Coral," the Professor corrected.

"-TARDIS coral on his first day here just so she could go back to prehistoric times and grow it into a fully adult TARDIS?"

Nod, nod.

"And that she then hopped forward in time once it was a fully grown TARDIS ship to split her boyfriend's brain in half-"

"His Time Lord consciousness," Donna stated, paused, then added, "sir."

"-his, his consciousness whatever, between the two of them so that now they both have a part of it?"

Nod, nod.

"And," he continued, his voice rising in pitch. "Not only has this changed her into something not quite human, but she has now decided to go running off with this madman in his box across the galaxy to fix what she supposedly did when she was an all powerful vengeful deity?"

The women glanced at each other, then looked back at him.

"So..." He planted his hands on his desk, pushing himself to his feet, his voice booming out through the office. "What you are, in essence, telling me is that _you have no idea where my daughter is_?"

The Professor shrugged one shoulder. "We know exactly where she is," she replied, grinning at Donna.

"Where is she, then?"

The Time Lady let her eyes wander towards the window, looking out over the great big city. Out there were countless people, thronging about, scurrying through their normal, daily lives. Heedless of what lay beyond - an endless dance of planets and moons, suns and stars, all so delicate, requiring only the faintest shove to send them all into complete disarray. It was a great big, wild, endless universe, and she knew exactly where Rose and her beloved John were.

Right in the middle of trouble.

She turned her gaze back to the bald man behind the desk, smiling widely. "She's in the TARDIS. With her Doctor. As it should be."

***** DW *** DW *** DW *****

(( AN: And that's officially the end! It's been a fun ride, very timey-wimey and exciting. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the fanfic. As always, please let me know what you guys think. I read (and savor!) every word. Just like ice cream. Your words are ice cream, yum~

If you've enjoyed my writing and would like something just as fantastical but perhaps a little less wibbly-wobbly, please feel free to check out my original trilogy - An Accidental Princess, The Princess and the Plan, and Nine Tails of a Storyteller. You can find them all through my profile page.

Until next time, fellow Time Travellers! ))


End file.
